The need for a relatively “cheap, compact and mobile” solution urged the scientific team to refine an imaging technique based on terahertz radiation, pulsing out nonhazardous electromagnetic waves at terahertz FermerA unit measuring electromagnetic-wave frequency equal to 1 trillion hertz.

While a few nondestructive strategies have emerged in recent years, these often come with their own setbacks: for example, X-ray-based imaging techniques present health hazards for operators and risk affecting pigments, whereas particle-accelerator devices are “bulky, expensive and cannot be applied in situ,” points out Locquet. But how can we map out the structure of these layers without tampering with the work at all? A faster and portable method Until now, researchers established the hidden layers of artworks by examining cross-sections of micro-samples removed from the piece. To understand the artistic technique of this Baroque gem, we need to delve below its visible surface, into its underlying strata. “We wanted to study a work with thin paint and preparatory layers,” says Alexandre Locquet of the Phototonics and Terahertz Group at Georgia Tech-CNRS UMI 2 in Metz, France, and the Italian painting conserved at the Musée de La Cour d’Or in Metz Métropole fit the bill. It wasn’t beauty alone that drew the engineering scientists to Madonna in Preghiera. 1 Not only does their innovative strategy promise to resolve long-standing uncertainties surrounding ancient artworks, it also raises exciting possibilities for a range of other areas.

What secrets does this prayerful Mary guard, gracing an oil-on-canvas that emerged from the workshop of 17th-century painter Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato? But even if the lips of the Madonna in Preghiera remain sealed, engineering scientists based in France, Italy and the US have now seen what lies behind her ethereal aura-materially speaking at least.īy coupling a highly-sensitive electromagnetic imaging scanner with an advanced data-processing technique, the research team has peeled away centuries of history and yielded a 3D map, in unprecedented high resolution, of the different preparatory layers under the painting’s surface. Hands raised, palms together, and eyes lowered, she is the very picture of communion with invisible divine realms.

3d layered painting