This site uses technical, analytics and third-party cookies.
By continuing to browse, you accept the use of cookies.

Preferences cookies

Italy-Québec, cooperation goes to “Science Advances”

As part of the executive Program of cultural cooperation, science and technology between Italy and Quebec for the 2017-2019 period, an innovative research in the field of technologies applied to the protection of cultural heritage, led by Professor Patrizio Antici, Italian scholar under all ‘Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) of Québec, obtained the publication in the prestigious journal “Science Advances”.

Antici, together with its collaborators and an international research group, which also involves the University of Calabria, the French particle accelerator AIFIRA and the Greek laboratory FORTH, has developed a new diagnostic tool to examine the state of conservation of the works pictorial: the research method uses laser technology to explain why some pigments of some paintings, including the famous Van Gogh Sunflowers, have lost their original luster over time, becoming increasingly dark.

Antici – graduated in engineering at the Sapienza University of Rome, with a doctorate in physics from the Ecole Polytechnique (France) and a doctorate in engineering from La Sapienza explains: “The new technology, which takes the name of In-Air PIL (from English In Air Plasma-Induced Luminescence), can be used not only to analyze the state of conservation of the works examined, but also to ascertain their authenticity, composition and origin. The In-Air PIL is more practical and economic than the most effective diagnostic system most used in the conservation sector, the PIXE (Particle-Induced X-ray Emission), therefore it is configured as a viable alternative soon to be marketable, with potential that does not they only concern the preservation of the artistic heritage, but also involve other sectors of the material sciences “.

The research was developed with the funding of the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie (MRIF) of Québec.