Publication Date:
2019-06-03
Description:
Art forgeries have existed since antiquity, but with the recent rapidly expanding commercialization of art, the approach to art authentication has demanded increasingly sophisticated detection schemes. So far, the most conclusive criterion in the field of counterfeit detection is the scientific proof of material anachronisms. The establishment of the earliest possible date of realization of a painting, called the terminus post quem, is based on the comparison of materials present in an artwork with information on their earliest date of discovery or production. This approach provides relative age information only and thus may fail in proving a forgery. Radiocarbon (14C) dating is an attractive alternative, as it delivers absolute ages with a definite time frame for the materials used. The method, however, is invasive and in its early days required sampling tens of grams of material. With the advent of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and further development of gas ion sources (GIS), a reduction of sample size down to microgram amounts of carbon became possible, opening the possibility to date individual paint layers in artworks. Here we discuss two microsamples taken from an artwork carrying the date of 1866: a canvas fiber and a paint chip (
Print ISSN:
0027-8424
Electronic ISSN:
1091-6490
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
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