Marco Fioravanti

University of Florence | UNIFI · Dipartimento di Gestione dei Sistemi Agrari, Alimentari e Forestali (GESAAF)

Wooden Panel Paintings (WPPs) stand as invaluable cultural artefacts from the past. These works present an intrigu- ing challenge in understanding their complex mechanical behaviour and ensuring their long-term preservation. The present study assumes as founding paradigm the unicity of each WPP, in terms of its material composition, historical back...

Since 2004, the wooden support of Mona Lisa has been studied by an international research team formed by specialists of wood science and optical measurements, interacting closely with curators and restorers, to evaluate the climatic specifications adopted for the then new climate-controlled display case, assess the risk of propagation of a historic...

Highlights • Integrating innovative numerical analysis and non-invasive experimental tests • Numerical tool to optimize the conservation conditions of Mona Lisa's wooden panel • Analysing the internal stress state, and its safe limits, of the panel painting • FEM numerical modelling for the mechanical characterisation of the artwork • Assessment of...

Wooden Panel Paintings (WPP) are among the most significant historical and artistic artifacts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance and pose a challenge to conservators and scientists in both their comprehension and conservation. From a structural point of view, they can be considered as multi-layered objects, consisting of a wooden support and seve...

Trees may represent useful long-term monitors of historical trends of atmospheric pollution due to the trace elements stored along the tree rings caused by modifications in the environment during a tree's life. Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) tree trunk sections were used to document the yearly evolution of atmospheric Hg in the world-class mining...

Wooden panel paintings are among the most important historical and artistic artworks from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period. Currently, they represent a challenge for conservators and scientists who face complex issues related to their conservation. Panel paintings can be considered multilayer objects, that for brevity can be considered to...

Preventive Conservation (PC) is the sum of the activities needed to protect cultural heritage from damage. Among PC activities, climate monitoring and control are especially necessary for anthropologic and ethnographic collections, which are highly hygroscopic. Knowledge of collection objects and their conservation needs, together with their housin...

The parade shields are artefacts present in the 15th century, up to the 17th. Even if their exact function is not clear, it is known they were not used in battle; according to most scholars, they might have been used as display objects, carried by soldiers and retainers of princes and noblemen in military and religious parades, or as tournament pri...

Mercury (Hg) is a global contaminant emitted to the atmosphere from both natural and anthropogenic sources, which have varied over time in response to increased industrialization and pollution control measures. The Monte Amiata Mining District (MAMD; Central Italy) hosts the 3rd largest Hg-district worldwide and an important geothermal field active...

About the 10% of global mercury (Hg) emissions to the atmosphere are due to biomass burning during a wildfire. We calculated the release of Hg by a hypothetical wildfire at two sites (Abbadia San Salvatore, ABS and Vivo d’Orcia, VO) in the Monte Amiata Mining District (MAMD), southern Tuscany (Italy), where past Hg mining affects local Hg concentra...

The integration between renewable materials and passive design strategies for the improvement of the built environment comfort leads to a reduction in energy consumptions and in the use of active HAVC systems. Sustainability concerns the materials employed, but also their performance: natural materials with embedded responsive properties respond to...

Natural wildfires are responsible for ~10% of total mercury (Hg) emissions to the atmosphere due to Hg volatilization from the tree biomass and Hg thermal desorption from soils. Mercury geochemical anomalies, such as Hg mining areas, utmost contribute to these emissions due to the occurrence of high Hg concentrations in vegetation and soil. Climate...

The motivations for the National Research Project on the Short Wood Supply Chain stem from the recognition of the great importance of the wood-based bio-economy for the future carbon-free society. In addition to the essential ecological benefits provided by forests, natural wood resources are expected to play a significant role due to the increasin...

One of the main goals of preventive conservation (PC) is to reduce the risk of possible damage produced by the interaction between tangible heritage objects and their conservation environments. This work aims to introduce the European standard EN 15757:2010 as a potential tool for implementing effective museum PC, and it details the potential contr...

The need for the reduction of energy use has recently led to the development of expensive and technological smart materials. The exploitation of specific properties of natural materials can reduce both the economic and the environmental impact characterizing the new technologies. In this paper, the hygroscopic behaviour of wood, always considered a...

The successful management of archaeological wood finds from waterlogged sites starts in the planning phase of any excavation. From the moment of exposure, waterlogged wood finds are extremely vulnerable to a range of man-made and natural threats. There is a real risk of losing the artefact if it is not handled and conserved properly. This paper des...

This research work investigates the possibility to use a hygroscopic model based on Fick’s law to predict the global moisture content variations an historical violin undergoes during a concert. To set up the model to work some input are required such as: the object geometries, the wood species used, the thicknesses, the moisture diffusion coefficie...

The measurement of wood thermal expansion at fixed values of moisture content (MC) between the dry state and the cell wall saturation point is a very difficult task, as MC varies with temperature. Being hygroscopic deformations much larger than thermal ones, in order to evaluate the latter, when changing temperature also relative humidity should be...

The wood species of 18th- and 19th-century Italian historic berlines (gala carriages mainly made of wood) housed in the Palazzo Pitti museum in Florence were investigated using non-destructive techniques based on the use of portable digital microscopes. Overall, thirteen wood taxa were identified. Among those, walnut (Juglans regia) was the most ab...

The large volume of timber available after exceptional windstorms exceeds the possibility of being absorbed by the manufacturing industry, especially at local scale. When left on site, timber can trigger insect attacks to nearby forests, develop depreciating biological modifications, increase the fuel load and the hydrogeological risk. Proper stora...

New bio-based polymers used as consolidants for waterlogged archaeological wood were studied and their performance on real wooden samples was assessed. In particular, three oligoamides (oligo ethylene-l-tartaramide, oligo esamethylene-l-tartaramide and copolymer between ethylenediamine, adipic and tartaric acids) and allyl α,α′-trehalose/vinyl alco...

Bamboo is one of the longest-used organic raw materials in the tropics for a large number of different purposes in the daily lives of human beings. Because of its excellent physical-mechanical properties, in many parts of the world it is widely used as a structural material, especially for the construction of scaffolding and the construction of bui...

One of many possible climate change effects in temperate areas is the increase of frequency and severity of windstorms; thus, fast and cost efficient new methods are needed to evaluate wind-induced damages in forests. We present a method for assessing windstorm damages in forest landscapes based on a two-stage sampling strategy using single-date, p...

On the occasion of the reorganization of disciplinary fields (DF) which is under implementation by the MIUR (Italian Ministry for Research and Education), the scientific production of the Italian forest research in two characterizing disci - plines (AGR05 Forest management and Silviculture, and AGR06 Wood technolo- gy and Forest Operation) has been...

We identified the wood of the sticks of eight bows in the historical collection of musical instruments in the Galleria dell’ Accademia in Florence. Wood identification was carried out non-invasively ( i.e ., without sampling wood from the original objects), because the removal of samples from fine musical instruments will affect their aesthetic int...

A series of laboratory tests were conducted on a commercial device for active relative humidity control of display cases to assess the ability of the machine to control a medium format (3.45 m3) museum display case. An extreme museum environment with large relative humidity and temperature fluctuations was simulated and different air leakage rates...

Queste Linee guida sono il risultato delle attività svolte nell’ambito del Progetto di ricerca “MOGFUS -Nuove metodologie operative per la gestione sostenibile delle fustaie a prevalenza di pino nero e delle fustaie e dei cedui “invecchiati” di cerro della Toscana”, finanziato dalla Regione Toscana a seguito del bando di ricerca: Interventi selvico...

A total of 99 Silver fir lumbers were tested by means of torsional vibration, to calculate the shear modulus; and free–free flexural vibration, to calculate the Modulus of Elasticity. The first five frequencies of vibration in bending were recorded and used to evaluate the shear modulus by finite elements approach. The present work shows that, than...

In this research the inside and outside relative humidity and temperature of the violin Guarneri "del Gesù" violin (1743) known as the "Cannone", were monitored during nine concerts. The environmental variations during concerts were analysed showing how the internal relative humidity tends to an average value between the conservation conditions and...

Il vento è uno dei maggiori fattori di disturbo per le foreste europee e i cambiamenti climatici hanno provo-cato un aumento di eventi estremi negli ultimi anni. La regione Toscana tra il 4 e il 5 marzo 2015 è stata colpita da una tempesta di vento che ha provocato notevoli danni ai soprassuoli forestali. L'obiettivo di questo lavoro è di sviluppar...

81 timber beams (14 of Spruce and 67 of Silver fir) were salvaged from different historical buildings. All the timber were visually graded, dynamically (vibration and acoustic methods were used) and statically (four point bending test) tested, to calculate the actual MOE/MOR. The results of the visual strength grading and dynamic tests were combine...

Identifying the wood species is an important step in the process of studying and preserving historic wooden artefacts. Identification procedures normally applied in cultural heritage contexts are unsuitable for musical instruments, as sampling might alter the aesthetics and functionality of these historically and culturally valuable instruments. Fu...

The present paper investigates the physical and mechanical modifications of both poplar (I-214 clone) and ceiba veneers and plywood after heat treatments of different intensities (5 and 7% of dry mass losses). Plywood panels were glued before and after heat treatment with urea-formaldehyde (UF) and melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF) resins. In order...

Homogeneous core-shell systems were obtained with a growth, in controlled steps, of several oligoamides on TiO2 nanoparticles. Derivatives of natural compounds, such as l-tartaric acid and α,α′-trehalose, were used as diesters in the polycondensation reactions with ethylenediamine. TiO2 anatase was chosen because of its high photo-activity and its...

The kinetics of heat treatment as well as its effect on some physical and mechanical properties of poplar wood (Populus alba L.) were analysed in this research. Kinetic tests were performed at different treatment temperatures and two different air ventilation settings [low and high air exchange rate (AER) with the exterior]. The treatment kinetics...

This paper describes experiments carried out to determine the influence of dovetailed cross beams on the dimensional stability of a panel painting from the Middle Ages. Besides a serious cup (transverse distortion), the panel featured an unusual longitudinal distortion, a bow, mostly originating from bending in the proximity of the middle cross bea...

Arboriculture plantations aim to produce high-quality wood. In order to investigate the type and extent of mechanical injury that pruning causes to tree cambium as well as the effects on the healing process, different types of shear were selected and used in an eight-year-old Quercus robur L. plantation. The amount of removed, detached and crushed...

To assess the possible effects of mechanical loading on the conservation of historical wooden musical instruments, a research project was carried out on the violin Guarneri “del Gesù” (1743), known as the “Cannone”. This paper refers to the results obtained by studying the deformations to which a violin is subjected after being tuned, with special...

Some oligo‐ or polyamides containing several hydroxyl groups were synthesized in order to obtain new water‐soluble compounds with a high affinity for polar materials as wood, paper, and natural fibers. The interest for the synthetic procedures is the use of renewable sources as starting compounds. In fact natural compounds or their derivatives, as...

The Ebe schooner-brig was built in 1921 and sailed the Mediterranean Sea for almost 40 years before being dissected into 90 parts to be transported to Milan (Italy). There, the schooner was reassembled, and the naval pavilion of the National Museum of Science and Technology was built around the ship. After 45 years in the museum, the ship presents...

This paper presents a study regarding the hygro-thermal conditions to which the violin Guarneri “del Gesù” (1743), known as the “Cannone”, is subjected during its conservation and occasional use in concerts with special attention on its mass and dimensional variations. Several environmental measurement campaigns were planned and carried out using r...

The structural analysis of historical musical instruments is a fundamental tool for the definition of restoration and conservation protocols, as well as for the study of ancient manufacturing techniques and the acoustic analysis related to this class of cultural objects. The importance and the value of typical bowed stringed instruments, on the oth...

This paper presents a deformative and structural study of the Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin (1743) known as the ‘Cannone’. A structural assessment is fundamental to understanding the violin's compatibility with its residual function of musical instrument. The tuning of the instrument to a modern playing pitch during concerts could, in fact, cause stre...

The effects of aging in wood in term of physical, mechanical and chemical degradation has been studied first by Jiro Kohara [1] and more recently by Erhardt et al. [2-3] and Obataya [4]. It has been observed that similar degradation can be found in thermo-hydro (TH) treated wood [4]. The aim of this study is to compare the mechanical behavior of na...

Peripheral milling of wood with up milling and down milling techniques is very well known from ageometrical point of view. However, in processing anisotropic materials such as wood, these geometrical aspects imply relevant differences when machining. In fact, milling of anisotropic material leads to different cutting geometries when up- or down-mil...

Considering the wide distribution of chestnut trees throughout Europe (including outside EU countries, from Portugal to Georgia and Azerbaijan), and the high density of forest (France and Italy count together up to 14.000 km² of chestnut forests), chestnut timber production proves to be a very good opportunity for all the Countries where it grows n...

Archaeological wood, and waterlogged archaeological wood in particular, are almost always characterised by a modification in the original properties and structure of the wood. Degradation agents can be of different origins (Biological, Chemical, Physical) and they are able to produce a large variability in the degradation of individual pieces, requ...

Feasibility studies have been car ried out at the SYRMEPbeamline of the Elettra synchrotron laborator y in Triestewith the aim of demonstrating the advantages and evaluatingthe ef fectiveness of synchrotron radiation X-raymicrotomography as a suitable technique for nondestructiveanalysis of bowed stringed instr uments. T heparticular geometr y of t...

Peripheral milling with up-milling and down-milling techniques is very well known from a geometrical point of view. However, in processing anisotropic materials such as wood these geometrical aspects imply relevant differences when machining. In fact milling anisotropic materials leads to different cutting geometries when up-milling or down-milling...

d'étude Dater l'instrument de musique – Cité de la musique – 6 juin 2009 107 Un exemple d'approche interdisciplinaire dans l'étude des instruments de musique : cas des deux « viola » du Quintetto Mediceo (1690) par Antonio Stradivari., conservateur, Galerie de l'Académie de Florence, Département des instruments de musique, chercheur, DISAS, Univers...

Round shields made of laminated wood were widely used in Italy in used in 15th – 17th century for tournaments, parades and exhibitions. The manufacturing techniques originally used are not known from literature nor from any still living tradition. This paper describes: a) a structural analysis of the shield on which Caravaggio painted his well know...

Il nostro Istituto ha la peculiarità di unire alla ricerca di laboratorio anche la sperimentazione campo ed in foresta. Questa caratteristica lo rende un osservatorio privilegiato, pressoché unico nel settore della ricerca forestale, per la visione ampia che questo tipo di approccio può dare ai temi affrontati. Oggi, dopo oltre 20 anni di ricerche...

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic analysis were carried out on recent and archaeological wood. Cross-polarization-magic-angle spinning13C NMR spectra obtained from samples of poplar (Populus sp.), oak (Quercus sp.), and silver fir (Abies alba) were examined in this study. The most relevant peaks were assigned according to t...

The haestetic evaluation of the wild cherry wood is shown and discussed with special focus on the wood color parameter's evaluation.

Nell’estate del 1998, nell’ambito di un’indagine finalizzata alla ricognizione sul suo stato di conservazione, venne richiesto all’allora Istituto di Assestamento e Tecnologia Forestale (oggi Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Ambientali Forestali - DISTAF) dell'Università di Firenze di studiare il supporto ligneo dello Scudo della Medusa di Cara...

The development of anatomical, hydraulic and biomechanical properties in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stems aged 7 to 59 years was followed. The hydraulic diameter and length of tracheids increased with age to a maximum at 15 and 35 years, respectively. Number of tracheids per unit of sapwood area decreased with age to a minimum of 500-600 trac...

Surface quality is one of the main factors to be achieved during secondary processing of wood. The technological features inuencing the nal quality, such as the tool geometry, the chip thickness, the cutting speed, the feeding speed and the friction coecient have been deeply analysed during the years. The aim of this work is to highlight the reacti...