
Renaissance Paintings Aren't as Green as They Used to Be - prostoalex
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/renaissance-verdigris-green-pigment
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spectramax
Summary: "We calculated that 16 hours of LED illumination corresponds with
several hundreds of years of illumination by museum light".

The article offers no further explanation or citation.

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wrp
I had read that LED lighting is now recommended as a replacement for tungsten
in archival situations. Is that wrong?

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nanidin
The article doesn't mention what kind of LED lights were used. They probably
used LEDs that emit light in the UV spectrum (like sunlight). They would
probably get similar results if they put the pigment in a tanning bed.

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gwbas1c
Honestly, I was hoping the article would contain digital approximations of
what the pictures looked like before they faded.

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sp332
Here's the paper:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335840833_Photochem...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335840833_Photochemical_Origin_of_the_Darkening_of_Copper_Acetate_and_Resinate_Pigments_in_Historical_Paintings)

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Gibbon1
There is some interesting stuff into things like synchrotron x-rays to analyze
the chemical makeup of old artifacts. Would be interesting to use that to
recreate images of how these painting looked originally.

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klyrs
They're a terribly inefficient, nonrenewable fuel. Why is this even a
question?

