High-precision surface analysis of the roughness of Michelangelo's David

The knowledge of the shape of an artwork is an important element for its study and conservation. When dealing with a statue, roughness measurement is a very useful contribution to document its surface conditions, to assess either changes due to restoration intervention or surface decays due to wearing agents, and to monitor its time-evolution in terms of shape variations. In this work we present the preliminary results of the statistical analysis carried out on acquired data relative to six areas of the Michelangelo’s David marble statue, representative of differently degraded surfaces. Determination of the roughness and its relative characteristic wavelength is shown.