https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202430914004
Characterization of photoluminescent and Raman properties of ultramarine blue pigment variants with a novel multimodal approach
1 Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32, Milano, 20133, Italy
2 Istituto di Fisica Applicata “Nello Carrara”, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Firenze, 50019, Italy
3 Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN, UK
4 Dipartimento di Matematica, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32, Milano, 20133, Italy
* Corresponding author: francesco.carta@polimi.it
Published online: 31 October 2024
Ultramarine Blue (UB) pigment, derived from lapis lazuli, holds a significant place in the history of late medieval and Renaissance Europe, owing to its unusually bright colour and stability. Its prohibitive price, which equalled that of gold, meant that it was only used by estimated artists. In this work we present a non-invasive, multimodal approach to the characterization of the photoluminescent properties of different variants of the pigment. The ultimate goal of this research is to propose a protocol for the identification of UB in artworks thanks to the combination of Raman spectroscopy and time resolved-photoluminescence spectroscopy and imaging.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2024
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
