Innovative monitoring plan for the preventive conservation of historical musical instruments

The Cultural Heritage preservation, preventive actions and preventive conservation have assumed during the last years an increasing relevance. These actions are aimed to reduce the risk of artworks’ deterioration and to protect the constituent materials, implicating several difficulties for the conservators. The musical instruments represent a particular class of artworks, because their conservation it’s not limited to the material preservation, but the original function of the object (that is to produce sounds) should be taken into account [Bucur, 2016]: the musical instruments, especially violins, can undergo to different degradation phenomena due to the use of the object. The validity of the existing practice in the museum, and the potential transformations originated from the “Object-Environment” system can be registered and evaluated applying a monitoring program through scheduled and periodic inspections. The research team from University of Pavia have developed an innovative monitoring plan, in order to study the conservation status of the violins held in the collection of Museum of Violin in Cremona. Two historic violins - Vesuvio 1727 by Antonio Stradivari and Carlo IX 1566 by Andrea Amati - have been selected for their greater and lesser use in performances over the years 2016/2017 and were analyzed by non-invasive methods at well-defined time spans. In addition, the Antonio Stradivari cello ex-Cristiani (1700) has been included in the monitoring plan with the aim to evaluate the modification of the varnishes after the performances. Wear areas of the violins due to the contact with the musicians, were identified by preliminary imaging analyses [Dondi, 2017], and a monitoring control of the microclimatic parameters (temperature and relative humidity) as well as illuminance were measured. The analytical investigations were performed every three months: weight measurements, UV-induced fluorescence light imaging, colorimetric measurements, X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) reflection spectroscopy have been performed. Preliminary results have allowed to outline a detailed framework about the state of conservation of the musical instruments. The data acquired in the course of the year will be used to improve the existing conservative procedures thus ensuring the materials durability as well as the sound preservation.