A Combined Non-Destructive and Micro-Destructive Approach to Solving the Forensic Problems in the Field of Cultural Heritage: Two Case Studies

Archaeometric Study of Two Tanagra Type Statuettes of Unknown Provenance to Support Forensic Study

This paper is concerned with a morphological-stylistic and archaeometric study of two small pottery statues, confiscated by the Cosenza Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and Anti-Counterfeiting (Calabria, Italy). The research aimed to establish the authenticity of the artworks and to verify a possible origin from the same workshop manufacturing, by providing indications about the textural features and raw materials used for their production. For these purposes, the analytical approach involved the use of minero-petrographic and physical analysis, as follows: petrographic analysis (OM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermoluminescence tests (TL). The preliminary observation, which highlights differences in the stylistic features of the two statuettes as well as in the color, morphology and distribution of the white-greyish patina, is further confirmed by the TL investigations. The TL test revealed an ancient production only for one of the analyzed finds and the investigations on the raw materials allowed to relate this to a possible local historical-artistic context. The second statuette, on the other hand, is attributable to a modern production as confirmed by TL measurement.

Style Recognition of Door God Paintings by Hypothesis Testing for Texture Features of Painting Patterns

Many studies in the literature have presented multiple remote sensing techniques for defect inspection of paintings. At present, however, papers on defect inspection and restoration of oriental architectural arts—such as door god paintings—are still rare. If an aged and damaged door god painting needs a restoration, then following the style and treatment skill of the original artist as much as possible is important for the restoration. Unfortunately, it is usually difficult to access the original artists for some of the aged door god paintings. This paper considers the texture features of auspicious patterns of armors on warrior door gods as useful information to recognize styles of door god paintings by unknown artists. First, a two-level two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform coupled with co-occurrence matrix calculation was adopted to analyze the texture features, based on the descriptors of angular second moment (ASM), entropy (ENT), contrast (CON), homogeneity (HOM), dissimilarity (DIS), correlation (COR), and cluster tendency (CLU), in the four orientations of 0° (horizontal), 45° (vertical), and 90° and 135° (double diagonal). Second, a two-tailed t-test based on the analyzed texture features was introduced into the hypothesis testing for demonstrating the master and apprentice relationships between the surveyed artists, and for recognizing the door god painting styles of unknown artists as well. The experimental results show that the proposed method effectively describes the texture features of the auspicious patterns of the surveyed door god paintings, and is able to determine the useful co-occurrence features for recognizing unknown artists’ painting styles.