a Team of scientists found a clue why one version of “Scream”, painted by Munch in 1910, quickly destroyed, despite ideal storage conditions: low lighting level, temperature about 64 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of about 50 percent.
Despite ideal storage conditions in the Munch Museum in Oslo, the canvas suddenly start to deteriorate. From the middle of the canvas began to go paint, and a yellow color in the upper part of the painting has acquired a whitish hue. In particular, cadmium yellow smears on the sunset sky at the top and the neck of the Central figure has acquired a not quite white color, while in the lake is peeled thickly applied opaque cadmium yellow paint.
Critics speculated on why this is happening, and one version was experimental inks that were used by Munch when you are writing a leaf. The fact is that to create a “flashy” color, Munch experimented using bold synthetic pigments. Maybe the picture was stored in inappropriate conditions, when it was stolen from the Museum in 2004, and within two years had not known where, in any case, the masterpiece demanded the restoration. It is believed that the light fault in the fact that the colours gradually fade, so he kept the picture in almost complete darkness, very rarely exhibited in the expositions, but nonetheless it spoiled.
Experts are seriously engaged in the study of the paintings and used the world’s largest spectroscope for analysis of micro-particles of paint. They conducted a spectral analysis of the surface and x-ray analysis of paint, reports the Daily Mail, the European synchrotron radiation facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. X-rays in the center of the 100 billion times brighter than x-rays used in hospitals. High-energy electrons make a run through the annular tunnel with a length of half a mile.
using of a particle accelerator was able to “remove” the position and movement of atoms in matter, to see its structure. Thus researchers have studied the structure and composition of a few flakes of yellow paint, utsepilsya from the roadway. And then enlighten the problematic fragments of paintings using beams of high-energy particles, studying their composition and distribution of different substances within them.
Scientists have found in the flakes of paint, and the surface of the picture itself traces of cadmium compounds and chlorine. Such substances, as shown by experiments on artificially aged paintings covered in “lemon yellow” from the tubes, belonging to the Munch, there are interactions of the pigment with water vapor, saturated with sodium chloride and other chlorine compounds. These reactions, as they note, occur even in complete darkness and with the humidity levels that are supported in most of the museums.
N�� the basis of these data the researchers came to the conclusion that high humidity causes oxidation of the cadmium sulfide used as a pigment in the original paint.
“Synchrotron microanalysis allowed us to pinpoint the main cause that led to the destruction of the canvas. It is the humidity, water vapor, salts and other compounds of chlorine.”, – said one of the study’s authors Letizia Monico of the Italian National research Council in Rome. Original yellow cadmium sulfide is converted into white sulphate of cadmium in the presence of chlorides-compounds in conditions of high humidity. This process occurs even in the absence of light, the scientists concluded, suggesting that photodegradation plays a less insignificant role in fading colors of the Scream.
the recommendations of scientists – to reduce the moisture to a minimum. To place a “Creek” on permanent display in the Museum level humidity should not exceed 45 percent. By the way, the cadmium sulfide is also used in the paintings of Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh and James Ensor.
