Federico Carò

The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Scientific Research

A small fragment of indurated limestone from Amarna, now in the Met's collection, contains several vestiges of what resemble drill holes, cut at slightly different angles. The main drill hole is about one centimeter wide and has a protruding stump at the bottom left by a broken drill core. Lightly consolidated material, the possible remains of an a...

The nature of ground preparations is of critical interest to those engaging in the study of historical painting tech- niques, as certain materials can be identi ed with speci c regions and school of painting. This is the case of a particu- lar ash-based, calcite-rich material obtained as a byproduct of lye production, recently identi ed for the rst...

Abstract Among the thirty-six paintings ascribed to the Dutch seventeenth century artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Mistress and Maid, in The Frick Collection, stands out for the large-scale figures set against a rather plain background depicting a barely discernible curtain. Although generally accepted as among the late works of the artist and...

More than 1400 turquoise stones associated with 98 archaeological artifacts from Egypt, the Near East, and Central Asia were analyzed using non-invasive point and scanning XRF. Geological specimens of turquoise from mines in the Sinai and Iran were also included in this study. The relative intensities of characteristic X-rays of Fe, Cu, Zn, and As...

Under Jayavarman VII (1182/83-ca.1218 CE) the Khmer empire reached its apex, leaving a heritage of major construction works and unique artistic production. The stone materials of several sculptures produced under his reign were characterized and compared to possible geological sources in northern and eastern Cambodia. The data suggest that a specif...

This paper presents the methodological approach to the characterization of two stucco collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) originating from excavations in Ctesiphon and Nishapur, Iran. The first collection is dated to the Sasanian and early Islamic periods while the second collection likely dates to the early Islamic and Seljuq p...

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948) molded the surface of standing limestone reliefs on monuments on the sites of Persepolis and Pasargadae built between the late sixth and mid fourth centuries BCE in Iran by using a wet paper processing method. These paper artifacts from once brightly...

At the end of the Middle Ages the Aegean was an active trade area, connected to numerous exchange networks. Arms and armor were strategic products, exchanged over extra-regional distance through the Mediterranean trade. To shed light both on military goods manufacturing and Aegean trade networks, this paper focuses on the archaeometric examination...

As part of ongoing research for the Met’s exhibition Embracing Color: Enamel in Chinese Decorative Arts, 1300–1900, enameled porcelain and glass objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art were selected for scientific analysis. This study focuses on three objects: two opaque orange glass wares—a small bottle from the Yongzheng period (1723–35) and...

Thrust (1959) is an iconic example of Adolph Gottlieb’s series of “Bursts” (1956-1974). The painting is grand in scale and consists of an aggressive thrash of black, gestural strokes beneath a crimson, haloed disc, on a white background. Gottlieb said that given the limited palette, his color choices were critical in conveying the emotional quality...

This case study details the noninvasive analysis of an 5000-year-old silver figurine from Iran, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The The object of this study, a figure of a kneeling bull clothed in a robe with a stepped linear pattern and holding up a spouted vessel, is composed of 15 pieces of worked silver joined together...

A group of coins excavated at Qasr-e Abu Nasr, Shiraz, in south-central Iran, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was studied and analyzed to examine the minting processes and to reconsider the numismatic history of the site. For this purpose, forty-three gold-, silver-, and copper-based coins were studied and analyzed by micro...

Inspired by the seminal work of Georges Groslier, ‘Recherches sur les Cambodgiens’ (1921), the objectives here are to explore various aspects of stone material culture in an attempt to establish spatial and temporal connections between sandstone typology, sourcing, and procurement on one hand and the creation of sculptures and Angkorian architectur...

Polychromy in Ancient Greek Sculpture was the subject of the exhibition Chroma: Ancient Greek Sculpture in Color, held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), New York, in 2022–2023. On this occasion, a multidisciplinary project involving The Met’s Departments of Greek and Roman Art, Objects Conservation, Imaging, Scientific Research, and coll...

Many questions still linger regarding the fourteenth-century tombs of the Counts of Urgell at The Cloisters (28.95; 48.140.1; 48.140.2). The turbulent history of the Catalan Monastery of Santa Maria de Bellpuig de Les Avellanes, with which the tombs are associated, has made it difficult to ascertain whether the museum’s installation is a mélange of...

A major conservation project prepared The Met’s furnishing velvet for display in the opening gallery of “The Tudors” exhibition. This intervention provided an unprecedented opportunity for Met colleagues to explore this important velvet as a physical object, engaging head-on some of the following challenges: to chart the intricacies of its techniqu...

Among the holdings of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, is a large-scale portrait by Édouard Manet that remained apparently unfinished upon the artist's death, in April 1883. This work, now known as Woman in Striped Dress, belongs to Manet's late artistic production and dates from around 1877 to 1880. A collaborative endeavor entailin...

Jacques-Louis David’s (1748–1825) iconic portrait of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Marie-Anne Lavoisier (Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758–1836) has come to epitomize a modern couple born of the Enlightenment. An analytical approach that combined macro-X-ray fluorescence with the examination and microanalysis of samples by Raman spectro...

In recent years, scholars have wondered how Juan Francisco de Aguilera, an artist whose presence in Mexico City is shrouded in mystery, positioned himself among the most influential painters of New Spain during the second decade of the 18th century. This study, one of the first dedicated to a work by Aguilera, focuses on The Virgin of Carmen, a sma...

The unique crystal shapes and skeletal structures of calcite particles associated with plant ash are crucial markers for the unambiguous identification of this material in the ground layers of paintings, particularly when small amounts of sample are available and/or when the heterogeneity of the elemental compositions make it difficult to assign wi...

A technical and scientific examination of an ancient South Arabian cast copper-alloy censer acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in 1949 revealed aspects of its manufacture that shed further light on the distinctive casting technology of ancient Yemen. This study also uncovered extensive damage resulting from its treatment before ar...

Non-invasive methods including micro-Raman spectroscopy (μ-Raman), micro X-ray fluorescence (μ-XRF), fibre optics reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) and environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) were used to study thirty-five ceramic shards from Afrasiyab and forty-seven potshards from Nishapur. These shards are dated from the ninth to the ten...

Scholarship has focused on the Gupta age (ca. 320–550) as the quintessential expression of classical Indian art, and on the key role of metal icons in the dissemination and development of Buddhist and Hindu practice during that period and its aftermath into the eighth century. In fact, although well attested in contemporary texts, few bronze figure...

The decorative surfaces of four pieces of eighteenth-century English red japanned furniture, including a card table and side chair by Giles Grendey (1693–1780), were examined. Crosssectional microscopy, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), Fourier transform infrared micro-spectroscopy (micro-FTIR), attenuated total reflectance micro-FTIR (micro-A...

The Paracas culture of Late Formative Period south coastal Peru (c. 900-100 BC) is renowned for its elaborate and colourful ceramics - particularly those decorated using the post-fire painting technique. The materials and the methods used to achieve post-fire painting, however, remain elusive. To investigate the evolution of, and regional variation...

A folio fragment attributed to the Fatimid period in Egypt was found to bear tufts of white crystals associated with the orange-brown and yellow paints. Raman spectroscopy identified a mixture of arsenic sulfide-based pigments in the orange-brown and yellow areas, along with vermilion in the outlines of the figures. X-ray microdiffraction, Raman sp...

Pigments appearing on ninth–twelfth-century AD-carved stucco, wall painting, and terracotta friezes excavated at Nishapur in north-eastern Iran were investigated by optical reflectance spectroscopy, micro X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (μ-XRF), X-ray diffractometry (XRD), micro-Raman spectroscopy (μ-Raman), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM)....

This article examines the history and conservation and offers a scientific analysis of a Sitara given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009. This Sitara, one of only a small number known from published sources, is a late nineteenth-century Ottoman curtain that hung on the Bab al-Tawba (Door of Repentance) inside the Ka‘ba in Mecca. Historical a...

Eighteen glazed objects from Nimrud, Hasanlu and Borsippa dated to a period from the ninth to sixth century BCE were analysed by micro X-ray fluorescence (μ-XRF), X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and micro-Raman spectroscopy (μ-Raman). While calcium antimonate (Ca...

This research project carried out at The Metropolitan Museum of Art aims at characterizing the composition and mineralogy of turquoise from archaeological contexts in Egypt.

Vincent van Gogh's still lifes Irises and Roses were investigated to shed light onto the degree to which the paintings had changed, both individually and in relation to each other since they were painted, particularly in regard to the fading of the red lakes. Non-invasive techniques, including macroscopic X-ray fluorescence mapping, reflectance ima...

Alberto Burri (1915-1995) was a pioneering Italian painter and sculptor. Born in Città di Castello, a small town in the region of Umbria, he earned a medical degree from the University of Perugia. While serving in the Ethiopian campaign and in World War II, first as a frontline soldier and then as a physician, he was captured and sent to a prisoner...

The scientific investigation of works of art has an essential role in understanding museum collections and is fundamental in establishing successful conservation and restoration strategies. In the multidisciplinary environment of museums, scientists work with conservators and curators not only to more profoundly understand works of art but to bette...

An X-ray fluorescence method to determine whether sulfur is present in 19th century photographs due to intentional toning or to environmental deterioration is proposed. In the 19th century salted paper print photographic process, AgCl formed on the surface of a sheet of paper was exposed to sunlight in contact with a negative, leading to the printi...

Between the 9th and 15th centuries CE the builders and artisans of Angkor and its territories furnished their landscapes with thousands of temples and tens of thousands of sacred sculptures, yet the operational behaviour of these craft specialists is little known. This article presents the results of excavations and materials analysis from a centre...

Early Khmer divinatory sculptures were typically carved from stone materials whose aesthetic attributes, such as color, texture, and attainable polish, have been maintained, if not pursued, at least until the 9th century. In fact, from the 6th to the 9th century, the stone selected for the representation of gods was consistently different from that...

Sandstone from several ancient quarries and natural outcrops located at the eastern foothill of Kulen Mountain and in Koh Ker, northern Cambodia, has been characterized by means of petrographic analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and geochemical analysis. The samples have been collected during a series of field surveys organized jointly by The...

A comprehensive quantitative petrographic database of sandstones used by the Khmers for sculptural purposes would be a helpful tool for archaeologists, museum curators and others interested in pursuing research on early stone usage, geological source and provenance. Towards that end, this paper presents quantitative petrographic analysis of stone m...

Plasters and mortars from Lardirago Castle (Pavia, northern Italy) have been characterized by means of petrographical and chemical analyses in order to achieve technical and historical evidence of material production. The study focused on the oldest nucleus of the structure, where hidden plastered masonry has been discovered recently. Textural and...

Two different analytical approaches have been taken into account to investigate the role of Si-rich phases in enhance hydraulic reactions of bedding mortar mixtures from San Lorenzo Church in Milan (Northern Italy) and from the Medicean Aqueduct in Pisa (Central Italy). In the first case, mortars show clear hydraulic type reactions in the form of c...

The petrophysical characteristics of a building stone used in the city of Pavia, northern Italy, are analysed in the light of stone conservation through the application of water repellent and consolidant products. The research focuses on the modification of petrophysical properties as a function of the applied products, and on the critical assessme...

Different image analysis (IA) methods have been developed to compute textural parameters of ancient plasters and mortars using standard petrographic thin sections. These IA routines were applied to samples of materials with different technological characteristics from three historical buildings in the city of Pavia (Northern Italy), covering a peri...

To compare soil porosity measurements, manual, semiautomatic and automatic 2D-image analyses were performed on three sets of images of the same fields. The first and second image sets were obtained, by a fluorescence microscope, on the polished surfaces of soil blocks impregnated with a fluorescent resin and on the thin sections made from them, res...

For the study of ancient or recent plasters and mortars, it is necessary to determinate some morphological and textural parameters to describe the aggregate fraction and its relationship with binder fraction. Textural analyses are commonly performed with simple visual comparators or, at most, with a time-consuming manual point counting. The introdu...