Non-invasive study of natural dyes on historical textiles from the collection of Michelangelo Guggenheim.
A selection of historical textile fragments from the Venetian art dealer Moisè Michelangelo Guggenheim collection, ranging from XV to XVIII century, has been investigated by means of non-invasive techniques in order to reveal the coloring materials. Imaging was preliminarily used to visually investigate the selected artwork fragments in order to investigate their structure and conservation conditions; Fiber Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS) allowed recognizing the main natural dyestuffs, such as indigotin and anthraquinones-based compounds, except the yellow ones, difficultly identifiable when using this non-invasive technique. Collected spectroscopic data have been also elaborated by using a clustering algorithm that permitted to group collected spectra on the basis of similar properties and evidencing their inflection point wavelength as the most influencing feature.
['de Ferri|L|L|', 'Tripodi|R|R|', 'Martignon|A|A|', 'Ferrari|E S|ES|', 'Lagrutta-Diaz|A C|AC|', 'Vallotto|D|D|', 'Pojana|G|G|']
Natural dyes Reflectance spectroscopy Clustering Historical fabrics Silk