Vol. 12, no. 1 (2020)

SMAArt (Scientific Methodologies applied to Archaeology and Art) is an Interdepartmental Centre for research and advanced training at the University of Perugia, established in 2001 following a specific co-funding by the Ministry of University and Research (Ministerial Decree 313/99), working in the field of the study and conservation of works of art. The Centre, strongly interdisciplinary in character, brings together teaching staff and researchers from various Departments of the University along with several Laboratories of the Interuniversity Consortium for the Science and Technology of Materials (INSTM) and of the CNR. The Centre has administrative autonomy and is directed by a Governing Board.

The objectives of the SMAArt centre’s activities are:

• to promote cooperation between the human sciences and the physical sciences;
• to offer academic and research institutions an integrated set of resources and expertise in the art-historical and archaeological field as well as the technical-scientific one;
• to create, through research, new and highly qualified professional profiles with a knowledge of cultural heritage that also embraces the properties of materials;
• to develop new investigation methods and portable instrumentation for studies to be carried out in situ and with non-invasive approaches;
• to coordinate and develop international and national research projects, as well as interdisciplinary advanced-training projects;
• to help establish productive activities in the field of the study, conservation and restoration of artistic, historical and archaeological heritage.

The Centre has run advanced-training programmes, including a European Marie Curie project entitled EPISCON European PhD on Science for Conservation (2005-2008), a second-level Master’s (2004) entitled Preventive conservation of cultural heritage, and a first-level one entitled Roots of stone (2006). All these programmes had a strongly interdisciplinary character, open to graduates in chemistry, physics, biology, geology, conservation science, art history, archaeology, architecture and engineering.

The SMAArt Centre has carried out, and continues to carry out, interdisciplinary research that has led to numerous publications in the international scientific literature. The most significant projects undertaken are the LabS TECH project (FP5 – Laboratories on Science and Technology for the conservation of the European Cultural Heritage); the Eu-ARTECH project (FP6 – Access, Research and Technology for the European Cultural Heritage), total cost: 5,379 k€, with an EC contribution of 912 k€ for the University of Perugia; the CHARISMA project (FP7 – Cultural Heritage Advanced Research Infrastructures: Synergy for a Multidisciplinary Approach to Conservation), total cost of 9,661 k€, with 904 k€ of EC contribution for the SMAArt Centre. These three projects were all coordinated by the SMAArt Centre. From the core of 22 international institutions formed within CHARISMA, in 2015 came the IPERION-CH project (Horizon 2020 – Integrated Platform for the European Research Infrastructure ON Cultural Heritage), coordinated by the CNR and funded with 7,995 k€, of which 280 k€ was the contribution for the SMAArt Centre.

Within the activities of these European projects, 2004 saw the birth of MOLAB (Mobile Laboratory), the world’s first mobile laboratory dedicated to the fully non-invasive diagnostics of historical and artistic heritage, carried out in situ. The most intimate knowledge possible of the materials that make up an object of inestimable value is the foundation of its conservation for future generations: MOLAB provides this instrument of knowledge in the safest possible way, bringing the necessary instruments and expertise to wherever the work of art is kept and carrying out a complete diagnostic campaign without the object even being touched. MOLAB began its activity with operators and instrumentation from the SMAArt Centre, from the CNR (ISTM in Perugia and INOA, ICVBC in Florence) and from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, taking shape as an entirely Italian infrastructure made available to the European Community for trans-national access activities. Conservators, restorers and researchers from across Europe who request MOLAB’s intervention are asked to submit a project which, once positively assessed by a European Commission, is fully funded and then carried out. Within the CHARISMA project, new instrumentation was developed both in Italy and in other countries of the Union (Germany, France, Greece and Poland) and, starting with the IPERION-CH project, became an integral part of MOLAB, today to all intents and purposes a European infrastructure, coordinated by the Italian CNR.

The MOLAB accesses in which the SMAArt Centre took part during its national and international activity have reached every country of the European Community, engaging researchers in non-invasive diagnostic campaigns on the most varied objects. To cite a few examples: paintings by the old Masters (Caravaggio, Leonardo, Memling, Van Eyck, Perugino, Raphael, Bronzino ….), works of modern and contemporary art (Van Gogh, Munch, Pollock, Rothko, Mondrian, Cezanne, Renoir, Manet ….), medieval manuscripts (The Book of Kells, Macclesfield Psalter ….), pre-Columbian codices (Codex Cospi, Tro-Cortesianus, Borgia, ….), important architectural and stone works (Portico of Glory in Santiago de Compostela, Roman Theatre of Merida, Cathedral of Huesca, Michelangelo’s David, sculptures of Asclepius ….), Renaissance ceramics, Stradivari violins, Egyptian sarcophagi, polychrome stained-glass windows …

In addition to the diagnostic activities, numerous activities have been carried out in the archaeological field, through collaborations between the group of archaeologists working at the Centre and: (a) the University of Udine;

• Regional Directorate for the Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Umbria; (c) Columbia University in New York, US; (d) Macquarie University in Sydney, AU. Within these collaborations, various campaigns of geophysical prospection and survey have been conducted both nationally and internationally, with recent investigations at sites such as Bribirska Glavica, in Croatia, and at the Italian sites of “Torremaggiore”, near Lucera, and “FG3663”, near Cerignola.

Further research in which the Centre is engaged concerns methodologies for characterising indoor and outdoor environments, aimed at developing innovative air-monitoring methods that can be usefully applied to the study of the relationships between the materials of cultural heritage and the environment. It is indeed well known that the problem of conserving works of art cannot be separated from a detailed knowledge of the properties and characteristics of the environment in which the works are displayed or kept. This subject is in fact one of the research fields to which the European Commission pays the greatest attention in the cultural-heritage domain, promoting the study of the interactions between artistic, historical and archaeological heritage and the changing environment.

As a goal for the near future, the SMAArt Centre is taking part, together with the CNR, in the project to create a permanent European infrastructure, the natural continuation of the activities undertaken in the projects mentioned above. The European Commission has approved funding of 4 million euros under the Horizon 2020 research and development programme to launch the preparatory phase for the creation of the European research infrastructure for heritage science, E-RIHS / European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science. E-RIHS brings together scholars and professionals from the human and natural sciences who recognise the need for an integrated approach, one that can be achieved by developing heritage science together. The aim of E-RIHS is to establish a single research infrastructure, with facilities distributed across Europe and grouped into national nodes offering access to scientifically high-level instruments, innovative methodologies and data, organised into four platforms: Molab, for the mobile instruments for non-invasive analyses of heritage to be carried out in situ; Fixlab, made up of large infrastructures such as synchrotrons, neutron sources and accelerators; Archlab, comprising largely unpublished archives of physical data held in prestigious European museums, galleries and research institutes; Digilab, for direct access to information on the object available in databases and digital libraries.

Ref.: Prof. Aldo Romani
Department of Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnology – Via Elce di Sotto, 8 – 06123 – Perugia