Lasers lift dirt of ages from artworks

BBC ^ | March 2010 | Doreen Walton

[SunkenCiv]

Physicists have applied the same laser techniques commonly used for tattoo removal to clean several famous works of art, including wall paintings. Laser cleaning is well established for stone and metal artefacts already. It has now been successfully applied to the wall paintings of the Sagrestia Vecchia and the Cappella del Manto in Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, Italy... Among them are Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded bronze panels Porta del Paradiso, or Gate of Paradise, and Donatello's Renaissance bronze statue of David... The team says the technique is now having a significant impact in the field of cultural heritage conservation. Wall paintings are the most recent application, and were a real test of the developing method, as Dr Siano explained: "This is a more delicate situation than metals or stone as the pigment is much more fragile." ...The difficulty is in choosing the right laser and sometimes, if it doesn't exist, having to build it. "When the laser doesn't exist you design the laser," said Dr Siano.

[SunkenCiv]

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[smokingfrog]

cool!

[handmade]

Being able to clean art that way has to be a really good thing. Amazing what comes along from time to time.

[Tainan]

Ya know, ever since I read about lasers being tuned and used to clean teeth I thought this might be another application.

"Lasers...is there anything they can't do?"...Prof. Homer J. Simpson.