All that glitters is not gold: A non-destructive probing of Thanjavur painting by Raman spectroscopy

Ramanathan Venkatnarayan; Keseven Lakshmanan; P J Arathi

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2018.06.088

All that glitters is not gold: A non-destructive probing of Thanjavur painting by Raman spectroscopy

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2018 Nov 5:204:460-463. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2018.06.088. Epub 2018 Jun 25.

Authors

Ramanathan Venkatnarayan¹, Keseven Lakshmanan², P J Arathi²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi 221005, Uttar Pradesh, India (Formerly at the Department of Chemistry, SASTRA deemed to be University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu 613401, India). Electronic address: vraman.chy@iitbhu.ac.in.
² Department of Chemistry, SASTRA deemed to be University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu 613401, India.

PMID: 29966901
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2018.06.088

Abstract

In this work, we demonstrate the use of Raman spectroscopy in detecting the presence of gold and semi-precious/precious gemstones in one of the classical paintings of India namely the Thanjavur paintings which have been awarded the Geographical Indication. We find through Raman spectroscopy that there are paintings where fake gold is used in the place of original gold foils. This result has been validated by carrying out the energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) which confirms the Raman spectroscopy findings. We propose Raman spectroscopy as a diagnostic tool for detecting the presence of gold and thereby to frame regulations for the Thanjavur painting market which would be of utmost importance to the artisans as well as its connoisseurs.

Keywords: Gold foil; Non-destructive testing; Raman spectroscopy; Thanjavur paintings.