Consistent Characterization of Color Degradation Due to Artificial Aging Procedures at Popular Pigments of Byzantine Iconography

Abstract

The degradation effects of artificial aging on the “true” pigment color of Byzantine iconography are thoroughly investigated in this work. For this purpose, a multi-material palette is fabricated, consisting of various popular egg-tempera pigments, while the original recipes from the literature are utilized in order to mimic the genuine art of Byzantine painters. Then, artificial aging procedures are appropriately employed to simulate environmental fluctuations in historical buildings, such as churches. A total of four time steps are investigated, including the initial condition, and pigments’ spectra in the ultraviolet/visible (UV/Vis) area are acquired in the diffuse reflectance mode at each individual step. Moreover, a color characterization procedure is realized via the quantification of lightness and saturation by means of the measured UV/Vis spectrum. The main objectives of this work are to determine the color stability, the type of color degradation, and generally the color response through time of the studied pigments. The extracted results indicate that a couple of pigments suffer severe color degradation while the majority present moderate darkening or discoloration.

Keywords

• aging
• Byzantine art
• cultural heritage
• egg-tempera
• lightness
• saturation