New insights into René Magritte's early surrealist painting La salle d'armes

Painted in 1925 or 1926, over an older composition, La salle d'armes, is among the first Magritte's surrealist paintings. It is also one of the only four Magritte's using enamels reported in the René Magritte Catalog Raisonné. This paper presents the material and technical study conducted on this double painting. The complementary imaging and analytical methods applied for this purpose provided substantial information on both, the visible image and the hidden one. Concerning the latter, for instance, the obtained results permitted to identify a cubo-futurist oil painting from the very early 1920s.     

Elemental 2D imaging of paintings with a mobile EDXRF system

Imaging techniques are now used commonly and intensively in cultural heritage object analysis. Nowadays, many different techniques in nature as well as many applications exist, where they can be applied. X-ray radiography and infrared reflectography as well as UV photography are some of the most applied techniques. The study of works of art usually requires these techniques to be non-invasive. Furthermore, they are frequently required to perform in situ analysis. A few years ago, our laboratory developed a mobile energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence and UV–vis–NIR coupled spectrometer, especially designed for fieldwork studies, where all three techniques can be applied strictly at the same site of analysis. Recent developments on a new positioning system have now allowed us to perform 2D elemental mappings with our equipment, which is especially well adapted to painting analysis. The system control is carried out entirely through a laptop computer running a dedicated homemade software. The positioning is achieved by means of a CCD camera embedded in the system and controlled via a Wi-Fi connection through the computer. The data acquisition system, which is made through a homemade multichannel pulse height analyzer, being also managed via the software mentioned above, goes through an Ethernet connection. We will present here the new developments of the system and an example of in situ 2D elemental mapping applied on an anonymous oil painting on wood panel. The discovery of a hidden painting under this oil painting makes it a good choice for a first example of 2D large scan with a mobile instrument.     

Study of the mechanism of direct laser desorption/ionisation for some small organic molecules (M < 400 Daltons)

Aspects of direct laser desorption/ionisation have been studied for three molecules, aminotriazole (positive ion), dinoterb and ioxynil (negative ion). The samples are deposited on metallic substrates, and a nitrogen laser is used for desorption/ionisation; ion yields are measured with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Previous work had shown that ion yields can strongly vary from one substrate to another, and that this variation does not reflect the (calculated) metal surface temperatures. New results obtained in this work indicate that the desorption/ionisation mechanism is linked to the physical state of the substrate surface. Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis and fading of eighteenth‐century Prussian blue pigments: a combined study by spectroscopic and diffractive techniques using laboratory and synchrotron radiation sources

Prussian blue, a hydrated iron(III) hexacyanoferrate(II) complex, is a synthetic pigment discovered in Berlin in 1704. Because of both its highly intense color and its low cost, Prussian blue was widely used as a pigment in paintings until the 1970s. The early preparative methods were rapidly recognized as a contributory factor in the fading of the pigment, a fading already known by the mid‐eighteenth century. Herein two typical eighteenth‐century empirical recipes have been reproduced and the resulting pigment analyzed to better understand the reasons for this fading. X‐ray absorption and Mössbauer spectroscopy indicated that the early syntheses lead to Prussian blue together with variable amounts of an undesirable iron(III) product. Pair distribution functional analysis confirmed the presence of nanocrystalline ferrihydrite, Fe₁₀O₁₄(OH)₂, and also identified the presence of alumina hydrate, Al₁₀O₁₄(OH)₂, with a particle size of ～15 Å. Paint layers prepared from these pigments subjected to accelerated light exposure showed a tendency to turn green, a tendency that was often reported in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century books. The presence of particles of hydrous iron(III) oxides was also observed in a genuine eighteenth‐century Prussian blue sample obtained from a polychrome sculpture.     

Towards the differentiation of non-treated and treated corundum minerals by ion-beam-induced luminescence and other complementary techniques

Differentiation of treated and non-treated gemstones is a chief concern for major jewellery import companies. Low-quality corundum specimens coming from Asia appear to be often treated with heat, BeO or flux in order to enhance their properties as precious minerals. A set of corundum samples, rubies and sapphires from different origins, both treated and non-treated has been analysed at the Centre Européen d’Archéométrie, with ion-beam-induced luminescence (IBIL) and other complementary techniques such as Raman, proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE), and proton-induced gamma-ray emission (PIGE). IBIL, also known as ionoluminescence, has been used before to detect impurities or defects inside synthetic materials and natural minerals; its use for the discrimination of gemstone simulants or synthetic analogues has been elsewhere discussed (Cavenago-Bignami Moneta, Gemología, Tomo I Piedras preciosas, perlas, corales, marfil. Ediciones Omega, Barcelona, 1991). PIXE has been frequently applied in the archaeometric field for material characterisation and provenance studies of minerals (Hughes, Ruby & sapphire. RWH Publishing, Fallbrook, 1997; Calvo del Castillo et al., Anal Bioanal Chem 387:869–878, 2007; Calligaro et al., NIM-B 189:320–327, 2002) and PIGE complements the elemental analysis by detecting light elements in these materials such as—and lighter than—sodium that cannot be identified with the PIXE technique (Sanchez et al., NIM-B 130:682–686, 1997; Emmett et al., Gems Gemology 39:84–135, 2003). The micro-Raman technique has also been used complementarily to ion beam analysis techniques for mineral characterisation (Novak et al., Appl Surf Sci 231–232:917–920, 2004). The aim of this study is to provide new means for systematic analysis of corundum gemstone-quality mineral, alternative to the traditional gemmologic methods; for this purpose, a Spanish jewellery import company supplied us with a number of natural corundum samples coming from different places (part of them treated as explained above). The PIXE elemental concentrations of the samples showed large quantities of calcium and lead in some cases that can be linked to treatment with fluxes or lead oxide. The plot of the chromium and iron concentration grouped the samples in various aggregates that corresponded to the different types of corundum analysed. Micro-Raman complemented the PIXE analysis corroborating the presence of lead oxides but the use of the PIGE technique was not successful for the detection of beryllium due to the low cross section of the nuclear reaction chosen for its identification. IBIL was capable of distinguishing between treated and non-treated samples of the same type based on the luminescent features of the materials. Work presented at the International Symposium on Luminescence Spectrometry 2008, September 7–11, Bologna, Italy