15
March 2023 ESRFnews
Synchrotron X-rays can
illuminate life-stories hidden
inside historic artworks. The
EBS, combined with new access
modes, is making the research
more powerful than ever.
Behind
the art
CULTURAL HERITAGE
T
HE British chemist and novelist CP Snow
famously lamented what he called “the two
cultures”: scientists on one side, artistic intellec-
tuals on the other, with little interaction between them.
That was over 60 years ago, and many still agree with his
analysis today. Yet there is one area of research that
presents a rare exception to the science–arts divide, and it
has been largely pioneered at the ESRF.
That research is the use of X-rays to study the makeup
of historic artworks and other cultural artefacts. At the
ESRF it has been driven for the best part of 20 years
by several scientists and users, in particular Marine
Cotte, the chemist and leader of the X-ray nanoprobe
group, and scientist in charge of the X-ray microscopy
beamline ID21. Thanks to their ambitious goals, the
synchrotron has provided unprecedented insights into
artworks of all sorts of periods and provenances: from
Afghan cave paintings to Greek ceramics, and from
Renaissance portraits to Expressionist masterpieces. It is a
field that is entering an exciting new era of productivity
thanks to both the EBS upgrade, and new community-
guided modes of user access.
Synchrotron techniques can reveal a lot about an art
work They can divulge how it was made and whether its
method of creation was original or derived from methods
used elsewhere The techniques can show what materials
were used whether they were local to the artist and how
they should best be conserved for the enjoyment of future
generations The chemical composition can give you lots
of information about the life of art in lost civilisations
says Cotte
Cottes latest study grew out of a longrunning collabo
ration with scientists at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
the Netherlands in particular the museums ongoing
project to study and preserve one of Rembrandts best