X-radiograph(s) of "Wall painting fragment from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase, room 19"

Identification and Creation

Object Number: Straus.8887
Title: X-radiograph(s) of "Wall painting fragment from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase, room 19"
Classification: Photographs
Work Type: photograph, x-radiograph
Date: August 10, 2016
Persistent Link: https://hvrd.art/o/356413

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Alan Burroughs Collection of X-Radiographs
Object Number: Straus.8887
Contact: am_straus@harvard.edu
Permissions: The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Description: X-radiograph Operator: Kate Smith and Elizabeth LaDuc

Duration of session: 3 hours

Total number of exposures: 7

Material Description: true fresco on plaster in a wooden frame (3 3/16" thick)

Radiation source: Comet tube

Exposure settings: 100kV 5 mA 90seconds 194cm focal distance (front view)
200kV 5 mA 180seconds 194cm (side view for stratigraphy)

Filtration used: none

Screens used: 0.010 Pb screen behind detector plate

Scanning notes: laser power high, 12-bit logarithmic data scale, PMT 10, 50 micron scan resolution

Image manipulation notes: dcm files exported with edge filter "display 6", composite image assembled with Photoshop and saved as tiff

Taken to learn about internal structure of the plaster support and framing.

Elizabeth Molacek, Kate Smith, Katherine Eremin, Lucy Cooper, and Georgina Rayner, Re-Discovering a Roman wall painting at Harvard: New research on a fragment from the Villa at Boscotrecase, Studies in Conservation, Studies in Conservation (https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2020.1733789, March 9, 2020), 65, 5, Pages 296-311, Figure 1, Page 297; Figure 6, Page 300; Figure 9, Page 301; Figure 10, Page 301; Figure 11, Page 302; Figure 12, Page 303; Figure 13, Page 303; Figure 14, Page 204; Figure 15, Page 304