Influence on visible radiation on radiometric properties of paints

It is well know that exposing a work of art to light involves an unavoidable damage: lighting of works of art must find a difficult compromise between exposition, minimal deterioration and colour perception. Colour perception is fundamental for our knowledge with the real world and in works of arts it involves at least two different aspects, the way the artist intends to transmit his or her message and our ability to receive and to interpret it. Unfortunately colour degradation is the first and most relevant perceived degradation. High accuracy spectrophotometric characterisation allows the determination of minimal colour degradation not yet perceivable at naked eye, and permits to modify the conservation parameters before damage becomes perceivable. This paper deals with the spectrophotometric characterisation of cultural heritage materials for the evaluation of colour aging properties and colour rendering under artificial lighting condition