A chemico-physical study for monitoring the microclimate surrounding works of art and ensuring the most suitable conditions for their preservation, with the aim of creating and putting on the market an environmental sensor which is efficient, and, at the same time, easy to use and economically accessible. This is what the Pisa post-graduate researchers have been pursuing as part of the international project 'MEMORI'. They have already brought their instruments for experimentation on masterpieces like 'Lady with an Ermine' by Leonardo and 'Medusa' by Caravaggio, as well as on various other paintings preserved at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Tate Gallery in London, the National Museum in Cracow, the Fine Arts Museum in Valencia and the National Art Gallery in Copenhagen.
'MEMORI' is an international project that joins 14 research groups and institutes of European cultural heritage. The countries involved are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom, with co-ordination from the Norwegian Institute for research on air 'N.I.L.U.'. Having already been financed by the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union, this project has received three million euros from the 7th Framework Programme with the task of developing the program in the next three year period.
The 'MEMORI' project is focussed on environmental polluters that can be commonly found in the micro-environment that surrounds works of art and which can be harmful to their preservation. At times these environmental polluters, mainly organic acids, can be emitted from the artwork itself. For example from the materials that constitute it, such as the pictorial layers, the wood or the canvas - but they could also derive from the material employed in past operations of restoration and preservation. Although, in fact, museums can protect their artefacts from external aggression such as city pollution and thermo hygrometric variations, a higher awareness is still necessary for an understanding of the complex microclimate which settles around the object itself. This project proposes to fill in this knowledge gap, to study systems for mitigating the aggressiveness of the microclimate that surrounds works of art, and to develop a new generation of instruments for environmental monitoring - dosimeters - accessible for large and small cultural institutes. This will enable the 'preservers' to know in real time if a work of art is situated in a suitable place or if it is necessary to take measures to improve the conditions of its preservation and/or exhibition.
Our country is represented by the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry of the University of Pisa through the activity of the Centre of Chemical Sciences for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (SCIBEC) with Professor Maria Perla Colombini and Doctor Ilaria Bonaduce. The research group has had more than twenty years of experience in the sector of scientific research dedicated to the safeguarding of cultural heritage. Within the 'MEMORI' project, Pisa is the leader for studies on the effects of environmental polluters on the preservation of pigments for paintings – the first 'barrier' a painting offers to the external world. The research carried out in Pisa aims to identify and evaluate the existence of parameters for assessment of the risks to which the preserved object is subject, therefore establishing the limit values over which it would be necessary to intervene so as to safeguard the work of art, thus ensuring effective preventive preservation.