Tempera-painted dosimeters for environmental indoor monitoring: A spectroscopic and chemometric approach

The importance of minimizing the deterioration of works of art has stimulated the development of new methods for the monitoring and control of environmental parameters. The effect caused to paintings by the global indoor environment can be evaluated by using dosimeters that reproduce the pictorial structure of paintings as closely as possible. After having prepared these dosimeters with specific pigments and dyes,they were aged in aging chambers under different conditions. Subsequently, mock paintings, prepared by using a reduced set of the more sensitive dosimeters, were placed in several museums and historical sites. Information on the alteration process induced by the environmental factors was obtained from a comparison between the natural and artificial aging dosimeters.