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

The importance of minimizing the deterioration of works of art has stimulat ed the development of new methods for the monitoring and control of environ mental parameters. The effect caused to paintings by the "global" indoor en vironment 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 chamber s under different conditions. Subsequently, mock paintings, prepared by usi ng a reduced set of the more sensitive dosimeters, were placed in several m useums and historical sites. Information on the alteration process induced by the environmental factors was obtained from a comparison between the nat ural and artificial aging dosimeters.