Monitoring of paintings under exposure to UV light by ATR-FT-IR spectroscopy and multivariate control charts

This paper concerns the improvement of a method, already applied for the conservation state monitoring of wooden and painted surfaces, to a system closely simulating a real artwork, namely a canvas painted with mixtures of three organic pigments (Alizarin, Permanent Red, Phtalocyanine Green). Ten mixtures of these pigments, according to an augmented simplex-centroid design, were prepared, mixed with linseed oil and spread on 10 cotton canvas strips. Drying ended, all the samples were analysed by ATR-FT-IR spectroscopy to describe the superficial variability in normal conditions of conservation, i.e. when no degradation is present. Successively, the samples were exposed to artificial UV light simulating the action of an aggressive portion of sunlight. The IR spectra of the surfaces were regularly acquired to monitor the superficial changes due to the UV aggression. Treatment ended, a chemometric study based on the Principal Component Analysis of the spectroscopic data collected both in normal conditions of conservation and during the artificial accelerated ageing, was performed and the multivariate Shewhart and Cusum control charts were built with the scores of the significant PCs (principal components). PCA based control charts showed to be able to identify the presence of significant changes of the painted surfaces, to identify the starting of the degradations and to provide insights about the chemical alterations induced by the UV exposure.