Nondestructive Investigation of the Internal Structure of Fresco Paintings

Abstract

New methods to measure the internal structure of wall paintings include single-sided nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and terahertz time-domain imaging (THz). We report the measurement of eight fresco models prepared with traditional fresco-making techniques in which we observe the structure of the wall paintings and verify the measurement techniques. Experimental results show that the two techniques are complementary; we expect these techniques to help in identification and analysis of historic wall paintings.