An innovative combination of non-invasive UV–Visible-FORS, XRD and XRF techniques to study Roman wall paintings from Seville, Spain

This study attempts to establish the advantages and limitations of the combined use of portable UV–Vis-FORS and XRF-XRD portable equipment for the non-invasive characterisation of pigments from Roman wall paintings from Seville, Spain, dated to the first and second century AD. XRD revealed the presence of calcite, dolomite and aragonite, indicating the colour white. Egyptian blue was identified using FORS and XRF, and additional information was obtained with XRD. For the colour green, FORS and mainly FTIR and colorimetry enabled the distinction between glauconite and celadonite, although other techniques were necessary to classify all components of the green areas by determining the presence of cuprorivaite, chlorite and chromium. For the colours yellow and red, the presence of goethite, yellow ochre, cinnabar and haematite was confirmed using FORS and XRF in some cases; the results were corroborated by XRD. Chromatic characterisation and the values of inflection points of FORS spectra enabled a better differentiation between reddish colours (orange, brown, purple and pink). The XRD and XRF techniques revealed that violet was created by mixing red haematite and Egyptian blue and slight variations in FORS spectra confirmed this.The authors gratefully thank Dr. Miguel Angel Tabales (Reales Alcazares) for their assistance and for providing samples, Dr. Elsa Van Elslande, Dr. Jacques Castaing and Dr. Philippe Walter (Laboratoire d’Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale, CNRS-Université Pierre et Marie Curie) for their assistance with FORS and XRD-XRF experiments; and acknowledge the financial support from FPI 2010 Pre-Doc fellowship and project BIA 2014-55318-R. The majority of data shown forms part of the PhD dissertation by I. Garofano (University of Seville, 2015)