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Short biography of Theodore Ganetsos
Theodore Ganetsos has graduated from the University of Athens (Department of Physics) and gained his PhD (2001 in Dreden Germany) in Ion Beams technologies and Material Science. His general interest is the use of non-destructive techniques for materials characterisation, using portable instruments Raman Spectroscopy, XRF, FTIR and Multispectral Camera, identify pigments in paintings and artefacts, and 3D scanning – 3D printing for applications in cultural heritage. His research results have been published in more than 250 scientific journals and conferences. |
ABSTRACT
Applications of Advanced Non – Destructive Techniques in Art and Archaeology
Dr. Theodore Ganetsos1*Professor
1Director of the Non-destructive Techniques Laboratory
University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
The National Museum of Slovenia is keeping two paintings of interiors, which are ascribed to Maria Auersperg Attems (1816-1880). The paintings were examined by a portable XRF apparatus and portable micro Raman instrument. For XRF analyses, 67 points were selected on different colours of the paintings. Measurements were carried out with Hitachi X-MET 8000 instrument using the tube voltage of 40 kV and electron current of 40 μA. The X-ray radiation was automatically filtered by a Densimet plate. As the apparatus uses a built-in program for the analysis of metal alloys, we extracted the measured spectra, fitted them, and calculated the elemental concentration by a procedure, based on independent physical parameters and normalizing to 100% the sum of selected chemical compounds. These were basic lead carbonate (PbCO3) for lead, BaSO4 for Ba, HgS for Hg, carbonates for K and Ca, and oxides for the rest. In all points we detected Pb, Zn and Ba, which are related to the white pigment used for diluting the pigments. Both paintings show inverse correlation between Pb and Zn, which reveals a combined use of lead and zinc whites. The concentrations of Ba amount up to 15%, and their linear correlation with Pb indicates mixing of lead-white with barite.
Raman spectroscopy was used to analyse and identify pigments and determine the palette of colour in paintings from the National Museum of Slovenia. The Raman spectra were analyzed in the 200-2000 cm-1 region using the portable Rockhound Raman spectrmeter with a 785nm laser. We identified in both paintings: zinc white, relead, cobalt blue, zinc yellow; red lead and cobalt blue for purple, zinc white and ivory black for grey, Van Dyke (dark brown) or Burnt Sienna (light brown) and green earth or cobalt green.