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Analytical Pyrolysis of Organic Paint Materials for Authentication and Attribution

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Analytical Chemistry for the Study of Paintings and the Detection of Forgeries

Part of the book series: Cultural Heritage Science ((CUHESC))

Abstract

The chemical analysis of organic paint material is still one of our most important tools for understanding an object, planning its conservation, and supporting speculations on the object’s identity and history. Analytical pyrolysis is a micro-destructive analytical technique that chemically characterizes organic materials in a large range of molecular weights, directly in the solid state, without the need for any pretreatment. This makes the technique particularly useful when dealing with samples from a work of art and archaeological object, where typically the composition in terms of significant analytes and the matrix is not known before the analysis, and natural and synthetic materials may be expected simultaneously.

In this chapter the use of analytical pyrolysis for the molecular characterisation of organic materials in case studies from archaeological objects and works of art, spanning from the fourth century BC to the 1980s, is presented. The aim is to discuss how analytical pyrolysis can contribute to issues related to the identification of artistic techniques, to reconstruct the history of an object through the study of its chemical signature, and to differentiate between original and non-original materials in paintings.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all the conservators, curators and conservation scientists that collaborated to the researches described in the chapter, and contributed to the publication of the results in the cited references. The Sander Collection, the restorer Stefano Ticci, and Adarte (Florence) are kindly acknowledged for providing the varnish sample from the Madonna con Bambino by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, and for allowing us to include the analytical results in this contribution.

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  1. Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa, Pisa, via Moruzzi, Italy

    A. Andreotti, J. La Nasa, F. Modugno & I. Bonaduce

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  1. A. Andreotti
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  2. J. La Nasa
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  3. F. Modugno
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  4. I. Bonaduce
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Correspondence to A. Andreotti .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Maria Perla Colombini

  2. Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Ilaria Degano

  3. Department of Conservation, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK

    Austin Nevin

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Andreotti, A., La Nasa, J., Modugno, F., Bonaduce, I. (2022). Analytical Pyrolysis of Organic Paint Materials for Authentication and Attribution. In: Colombini, M.P., Degano, I., Nevin, A. (eds) Analytical Chemistry for the Study of Paintings and the Detection of Forgeries. Cultural Heritage Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86865-9_6

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