The transition from egg-based tempera to oil painting in quattrocento was a turning point in art history and influenced the creation of Renaissance masterpieces by renowned artists of the time. Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Leonardo da Vinci continued to use egg in parallel or in combination with oil and prepared paints of great complexity. Protein-oil mixtures, used as paint...
Singular alterations affecting modern oil paintings have recently drawn a great deal of attention in conservation science[1]. Although their appearance remains a rare and isolated phenomenon, they are singular through their random occurrence, their fast kinetics of development, and the difficulty in anticipating and stabilizing them[2]. For many artists, the middle of the XXth century is also...
A large number of written and illustrated papyri from ancient Egypt have survived through the ages, carrying stories, practices, and numerous details of the everyday life in Egypt several millennia ago. We have investigated a series of illustrated papyri from the collection of the Champollion museum (Vif, département de l’Isère, France) showing scenes from the Book of the Dead, a document...
The Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) underwent a major upgrade in 2018, including rebuilding one-sixth of the electron storage ring and completely remodeling the experimental floor. This talk will describe current capabilities at CHESS for cultural heritage research, with an emphasis on multi-modal scan-probe methods such as x-ray fluorescence + diffraction. Example studies of...
In medieval Europe it was common practice to wear amulets as lucky charms and to ward off evil. These lucky charms could for example consist of thin sheets of lead with an inscription of letters or runes scratched onto the surface. These lead sheets were then often folded several times or rolled to conceal and preserve the text but also to enhance the effect of the inscription. The study of...
The blue pigment smalt, a synthetic potash glass tinted with cobalt, was widely used in paintings between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries [1]. Smalt tends to weather in oil paintings, changing its blue color to a yellowish hue. This alteration is caused by an ionic exchange between $H^{+}$ ions from the environment surrounding the grains and the $K^{+}$ ions from the glass. The leaching...
Archaeological textiles from temperate climates are particularly difficult to study due to their state of degradation. The main mechanism of preservation, referred to by archaeologists as mineralisation, involves the nucleation and growth of mineral phases formed from metal cations from an adjacent archaeological artefact. Mineralisation makes it possible to preserve a cast or imprint of...
