Beyond the youth smile: investigating techniques and materials in Caroto’s paintings by analytical single-point analyses and IR reflectography in full-field

Giovan Francesco Caroto was a famous Renaissance who played a fundamental role in Venetian painting at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Despite this, just a few of his works have been studied in depth with a multidisciplinary approach between art history and scientific diagnostics. In this study, twenty paintings spanning almost forty years of his entire production in different areas of Northern Italy were analysed. The occasion for this study was the monographic exhibition dedicated to Caroto in Verona, in the halls of the Palazzo della Gran Guardia, in 2022. The research project focused on the application of non-invasive and in-situ techniques on a large number of paintings, following a consolidated protocol from imaging to spectroscopic analyses. The goal was to transition the local determination into a whole pattern analysis through a chemometric statistical evaluation. Indeed, it was possible to gain an overview of the material dimension of the artist by correlating chemical data with the year and place of production. This was achieved by overlapping Vis-IR imaging data with a high number of surface analyses (UV-Vis-NIR fibre optics reflectance spectroscopy -FORS-), and stratigraphic elemental analyses (XRF spectrometry). A multi-layer reading of the analysed works was proposed from the preparatory layer to the glaze and surface finish. Full-field IR reflectography allowed the corpus analysed to be considered in its entirety, discriminating original materials and retouchings, for the identification of the areas most representative for chemical analyses. The application of this protocol, along with the cross-discussion of the data acquired, and the comparison with historical sources enabled the identification of the artist's palette and its evolution over time. Moreover, the determination of minerals and minor elements in pigments traced Caroto's movements between Verona and Casale Monferrato, also providing information on material supply habits.