X-ray Synchrotron Radiation to Look at Pigments in Antiquities: Overview and Examples

The recent upgrading of synchrotron radiation (SR) sources has favored, in the last few years, the construction and design of beamlines optimized for the study of cultural heritage materials, which may require ad hoc setups, specific spatial resolutions, and detection limits. In the field of cultural heritage, integrated approaches combining different techniques are often required, even at large facilities, where some beamlines offer the possibility of performing different types of measurements at the same point of analysis, complementing preliminary information usually obtained by conventional laboratory and/or portable in situ methods. An overview of the last ten years of synchrotron applications for the study of pigments is given, with discussion of upstream and downstream challenges to methods and techniques. The possibilities offered by the synchrotron techniques are illustrated by a case study of a particular class of painted ceramics, as an example of different research questions that are solved by a combination of SR-based methods.