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Argonne to help uncover a lost masterpiece

Catwell
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Artist Peter Paul Ruben's copy of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Battle of Anghiari."
 
Argonne National Laboratory is its own city just outside of Chicago, Illinois, USA. The company has a heliport, guest housing, and is a tourist attraction with daily tours. Argonne is soon to be a powerful force in energy research. But, buried in the company's plethora of projects and technology is one scientist is working towards re-discover a lost, and priceless, work of art.
 
Leonardo da Vinci's "Battle of Anghiari" was to be painted in the "Hall of 500," the town hall of Florence, Italy, called the Palazzo Vecchio. The year was 1503, and Leonardo was to create one of his most ambitious works of his career. The way was prepared for him, and a layer of "tin white," which contains tin and linseed oil, was painted onto the surface. Over the course of two years, Leonardo painted the work with some difficulties. Although, he was having paint melting issues and other problems, Leonardo had to abandon the work for another commission in Rome.
 
In 1563 the hall was remodeled, and Leonardo's painting was to be covered over with a work from Giorgio Vasari. Four hundred and twelve years later, in 1975, bioengineer Maurizio Seracini was visiting the Palazzo Vecchio and read an message on a tiny flag in Vasari's painting "CERCA TROVA," meaning seek and ye shall find. This was a defining moment for Seracini as an engineer. In 1977, he founded the first company that uses non-destructive imagine devices for analyzing art. He wanted to see beneath Vasari's painting to find Leonardo's masterwork.
 
Seracini uses techniques that include laser, radar, and sonar equipment to detect what is underneath objects. He used this tech to confirm that there is a layer underneath the Vasari painting. Meaning, Leonardo's work may be waiting for the world to see it again. However, the scanning technique could not image the painting underneath.
 
Dave Yoder of the National Geographic Society brought Seracini to Argonne after reading about Argonne physicist Robert Smother's method of scanning the internals of the human body without damaging the outer layers.
 
Smither's method involves using neutrons to penetrate the layers. Some would pass through all layers. The neutrons would react with the "tin white" and create radioactive nuclei that would emit gamma rays. The gamma rays would pass back through the surface layers. Smither explained, "What we'd do is look for specific kinds of radioactivity produced by different color paints. We think it should be possible to detect whether the paint from the original painting survives, and perhaps even map an outline of the painting based on the colors."
 
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Test setup to see in a neutron/gamma scan would work. (Via Dave Yoder)

To perform the scan, the neutron  generator and gamma-ray detectors will have to be raised to the height of the painting, around 20 feet off the ground. A movable scaffold will be needed. More importantly, funding for the effort has to come first. Eventually, it will happen, and Argonne technology will then a priceless work of art back upon human eyes after 500 years. 
 
Inspiration followed a circuitous path from a single engineer to Argonne all the way from the distant past, and hopes to change the world. Read more about this project at Argonne's website.
 
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