Non-invasive in situ analytical techniques working in synergy: The application on graduals held in the Certosa di Pavia

Summarizing the palette, the blue pigments used are ultramarine, azurite and, in one case, smalt blue; the red and pink hues are given by red ochre, vermillion and lakes; the yellow ones by orpiment, lead-tin yellow and yellow ochre. The white used is lead white, both in mixtures and as underpainting layer. The application of techniques with different penetration depths allowed to detect the stratigraphic sequences without sampling, opening to the interesting application to off-limits masterpieces. Intriguing is the case of green pigments, recognized as malachite and basic copper sulphates, but possibly also given as a mixture of copper-based and yellow pigments. The different kinds of gold and silver gildings were considered and investigated, accounting for different executing techniques for the different authors. The closing challenge will be determining the binders without any sampling, but exploiting FTIR spectra for the detection of organic binders.