ARTICLE IN PRESS

Applied Radiation and Isotopes 68 (2010) 6670

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Applied Radiation and Isotopes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apradiso

Neutron back scattering for the search of the Battle of Anghiari

V.R. Bom a,, A. Cosentino b, M. Seracini b, R. Rosa c
a
Delft University of Technology, Department of Applied Physics, Mekelweg 15, 2629 JB Delft, The Netherlands
b
Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr. La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
c
ENEA, Casaccia Research Center, Via Anguillarese 301, 00123 Rome, Italy

a r t i c l e in f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Battle of Anghiari is a wall painting made by Leonardo Da Vinci around 1505. Its present day
Received 17 June 2009 location is unknown but some indications suggest that the mural might be concealed behind a brick
Received in revised form wall. Test measurements are presented demonstrating that neutron back scattering (NBS) can be used to
30 July 2009
search through the wall for the painting. NBS is a non-destructive technique to establish the presence of
Accepted 31 July 2009
the hydrogen contained in the painting materials that were probably used by Da Vinci.
& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Neutron back scattering
Leonardo Da Vinci
Battle of Anghiari
Non-destructive testing

1. Introduction research was done by Seracini in 2000 using laser scanning,

In 1503 Leonardo Da Vinci accepted a commission from the
chief magistrate of the Republic of Florence to paint a large mural
on a wall of the Hall of 500 in the Palazzo Vecchio. This painting
was to commemorate the historic Battle of Anghiari (BoA) in
which the Florentine army defeated the Milanese one in 1440 and
would be Leonardo Da Vincis largest and most substantial work,
about three times the size of the famous Last Supper mural he
painted in Milano in 1495. Work began presumably in June 1505
but it would never be completed. Contemporaries describe the
painting as Da Vincis most magnicent work ever and it is of
great interest because the artist used a new experimental painting
technique based on oil. The unnished mural remained in the Hall
of 500 until 1563 when the architect and painter Giorgio Vasari
undertook renovation of the space. The ceiling and the walls were
raised and Vasari himself covered the new walls with frescoes and
all traces of the Battle of Anghiari were lost. Some scholars believe
that Vasari was a far too great admirer of Leonardo Da Vinci to
have destroyed the artwork and that it would have been a simple
enough matter to have built a new wall over the work of Leonardo,
as was sometimes done in those days.
A rst investigation to determine if the BoA was behind one of
the walls was carried out in 1975 by Seracini, Newton and Asmus,
using a variety of introspection methods. The research was
unsuccessful due to the lack of appropriate technologies. Further
 Corresponding author.
E-mail address: V.R.Bom@TUDelft.nl (V.R. Bom).
thermography and ground penetrating radar (Pieraccini et al.,
2005). The thermographic investigation showed that Vasari had
built brick walls to support six new murals and the radar
measurements provided insight in the internal structure of east
and west walls. The west wall appeared to be homogeneous as
radar images showed no traces of an internal interface. However,
inside the east wall a discontinuity clearly appeared at 15 cm
depth, which could correspond to an air gap between the masonry
built by Vasari and the original wall, maybe to preserve the BoA
mural.
The presence of the BoA behind the masonry front wall might
be conrmed by using non-destructive and non-invasive neutron
techniques such as neutron nanosecond analysis (NNA) and
neutron back scattering (NBS). NNA is based on n; g reactions
and can be used to detect the elemental composition of materials
inside the wall. Neutron back scattering is based on the slowing
down of fast neutrons by hydrogen nuclei. NBS can only detect
hydrogenous materials but has a high speed of operation
compared to the NNA technique. The hydrogen in the case of
the BoA search would be present in the materials used by
Leonardo Da Vinci such as Greek pitch, linseed oil, walnut oil and
gesso, which have been used according to original documents.
Gesso is the Italian word for Board chalk (akin to the Greek
word gypsum), and is a powdered form of the mineral calcium
carbonate, CaSO4  2H2 O. Each calcium carbonate molecule nor-
mally contains two water molecules bound into the crystal. Gesso
was traditionally mixed with animal glue, usually rabbit-skin
glue, to be used as a primer coat preventing paint from soaking
into the support layer. Leonardo Da Vinci plastered his wall with

0969-8043/$ - see front matter & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2009.07.025
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
V.R. Bom et al. / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 68 (2010) 6670
gesso because he tried out an experimental technique using the
wall as it were a big panel painting, and used oil based paints.
Gesso was not applied by Vasari. He used mortar instead, made
from sand and lime, to build the wall and as preparation for his
frescoes. The Vasari paintings do not interfere with the NBS
method since dried mortar does not contain hydrogen.
The feasibility of NBS for the search for the BoA has been tested
using mock walls at the Delft University of Technology in the
Netherlands and at the ENEA laboratories in Casaccia near Rome,
Italy. The results of both tests are presented in this paper, leading
to the conclusion that the NBS technique may be applied
successfully in the search for the BoA mural and that the method
does not constitute any risks neither to the existing Vasari
paintings nor to the public in the Hall.
2. Neutron back scattering
Neutron back scattering is a well established method to show
the presence of hydrogen. It is used, among others, for land mine
detection (Brooks et al., 1999; Datema et al., 2001, 2002; Bom
et al., 2005).
A NBS detector operates by irradiating the surface under
investigation with high energy (MeV) neutrons. The neutrons lose
energy by scattering from atomic nuclei beneath the surface and
become thermal after a number of collisions. The thermalization
process takes far fewer collisions when scattering from hydrogen
as compared to other elements. The concentration of thermal
neutrons in regions containing hydrogen-rich materials will
therefore be relatively high. A thermal neutron detector that
monitors the neutron ux coming back from the irradiated surface
will show an increased count rate above hydrogenous regions. An
important advantage of the NBS method is the high speed of
operation (Bom et al., 2006). The main limitation of the NBS
method lies in the sensitivity to moisture. The masonry in case of
the BoA search, however, is very dry because the east wall in the
Hall of 500 is an inner wall and there is no observed leakage from
the roof. The hydrogen containing materials inside the east wall
can therefore only be the oils, the resin and the gesso used by
Leonardo Da Vinci.
The NBS system used is the Delft University neutron back-
scatter imaging detector (DUNBID). It consists of 16 position
sensitive thermal neutron proportional counter tubes that are
placed in a tray covering an area of 50  50 cm2 . The position of a
neutron hit along a tube is determined by charge division, the
tube number provides the position in the direction perpendicular
to the tubes. Both positions are fed into a process computer and a
2D image of the back scattered thermal neutron intensity is
formed, reecting the hydrogen distribution beneath the surface.
There is extensive blurring in the image due to the heavy
scattering of the neutrons. The advantage of using a 2D approach
is the enhanced sensitivity for the detection of discontinuities in
comparison to only monitoring the overall count rate. The spatial
resolution is approximately 3  3 cm2. The detection efciency is
almost 1 for neutrons with thermal energies and decreases to
around 104 for 2.5 MeV neutrons. The neutrons are provided by a
radioisotope 252Cf point source that is positioned in the center of
the detector. The sensitivity for hydrogen detection varies over the
detector area due to the dependence of the neutron ux on the
distance from the source.
3. Test structures
The east wall can be regarded as composed of three main
structural elements: a front wall, the mural and a back wall. It is
67
impossible to build an exact reproduction of the east wall cross
section because the pictorial technique used by Leonardo Da Vinci
and the composition of the wall on which the mural was painted
are unknown. DUNBID was evaluated on two different test
structures to cope with this limitation: the Delft structure and
the ENEA one. They were designed to cover a range of likely
compositions of the east wall. The real east wall, regarding to
neutron back scattering, is expected to behave in a way that will
be in between the two structures. Both structures are composed of
the three main parts.
Front brick wall: Samples of the bricks used by Vasari for the
front wall 15  4  30:5 cm are available and so the reproduction
of the front wall was not an issue.
Mural: The technique used by Da Vinci can be guessed from the
supplies he bought between August 1504 and April 1505, namely:
gesso, Greek pitch, and white soda. The back wall must rst have
been covered with wall gesso. A ground layer of Volterrano gesso
mixed with Greek pitch, most likely made to react with the white
soda (sodium hydroxide), may have been applied next on the wall
gesso. Leonardo must have painted a ground color with Alexan-
drian white and linseed oil on this ground layer, nally followed
by the pigments, mixed with linseed and walnut oils. It cannot be
guessed how much gesso, Greek pitch and linseed oil were applied
on each square meter, therefore the mural of the Delft structure
was made with a high concentration of linseed oil and the ENEA
structure mural was made with three different smaller amounts.
Back wall: The east wall probably is made of mortar, stones and
likely clay elements and its average thickness is about 70 cm, but
the actual composition is not known. The Delft back wall consists
of 1 m dry sand, which depth is enough to be considered innite,
and the ENEA test structure has a back wall made of bricks (less
silicon and more aluminum) with a natural moisture level and a
nite depth. The actual back wall in the Palazzo Vecchio is
supposed to be in between these two extreme cases.
3.1. Delft structure
The Delft structure was built at the Delft test lane facility,
which was especially constructed to test NBS demining systems.
The facility consists of a box of 3  8  1 m3 lled with sand. The
sand is heated from the bottom to keep it as dry as possible. This
box constitutes the back wall.
The mural was simulated by a plasterboard 200  60 
0:9 cm3 laid down on the sand, building a horizontal wall
structure. The plasterboard is made of a gypsum layer and covered
with paper and is assumed to suitably simulate gesso for the
neutrons. A section 60  60 cm2 of the plasterboard was painted
with linseed oil 1:38 l=m2 to simulate the mural on the gesso. An
aluminum plate 60  60  0:5 cm3 was also used, to evaluate the
sand box background. Three different front walls, made with
bricks 6:5  5  20 cm3 , were built on top of the plasterboard
and the aluminum plate and tested (see Fig. 1):
(A) Two layers of bricks 260  60  10 cm3 .
(B) Three layers of bricks 260  60  15 cm3 .
(C) Three layers of bricks 260  60  15 cm3 plus a 5 cm
distance DUNBID-wall.
3.2. ENEA structure
The ENEA structure was built at the ENEA laboratory in
Casaccia, Rome. The front wall 180  120  15 cm3 was built
with one layer of bricks. The mural was replicated using one of
four plasterboards 100  120  0:9 cm3 of which three were
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68 V.R. Bom et al. / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 68 (2010) 6670
Fig. 1. Layout of the experimental congurations of the Delft test structure.
Fig. 2. Layout of the experimental conguration of the ENEA test structure.
painted with different quantities of linseed oil: 0.41, 0.83 and
1:25 l=m2 .
The back wall was built with two layers of bricks and was 5 cm
away from the front wall. Fig. 2 shows the ENEA structure cross
section.
4. Results
4.1. Delft structure
Measurements were done with each of the three front walls (A,
B and C, see Section 3.1 and for the following four experimental
congurations (see Fig. 1):
DELFT-1. Background: DUNBID above the aluminum plate.
DELFT-2. Plasterboard: DUNBID above the plasterboard with-
out linseed oil.
DELFT-3. Linseed oil plasterboard: DUNBID between the
plasterboard without and with linseed oil.
DELFT-4. Linseed oil 1:38 l=m2 : DUNBID above the plasterboard
with linseed oil.
Counts were collected with an acquisition time of 500 s using a
252
Cf source of 1:5  105 n=s. The background count rate was
270 c/s. Fig. 3 shows the count rate excess above the count rate
measured at the background position (conguration DELFT-1), as
Fig. 3. The count rate excesses above background as fraction of the background
count rate for the three front wall congurations A, B and C mentioned in the text
and the three congurations DELFT-4, DELFT-3 and DELFT-2 (from left to right).
The drawn and dashed lines reect the trend for the 15-cm bricks with standoff
and the 10-cm bricks front walls, respectively (walls A and C).
a fraction of that background count rate, for the three front wall
congurations A, B and C.
The absolute count rate for the background measurements
varies for cases A, B and C as: 1.00, 0.93 and 0.82, respectively,
showing a decreasing rate as the distance of the detector to the
back wall (the sand in this case) increases. The plasterboard
(conguration DELFT-2) could be detected in all the setups with
an excess count rate between 12% and 15%. The plasterboard
painted with linseed oil (conguration DELFT-4) could be detected
with a 2528% excess count rate. DUNBID could also report a
lesser linseed oil amount (conguration DELFT-3) giving an excess
fraction between 19% and 22%. Fig. 3 shows two trend lines for the
two front wall congurations A and C. The slope of the line is an
indication for the sensitivity of the method to the presence of
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V.R. Bom et al. / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 68 (2010) 6670 69

linseed oil. The sensitivity is higher the closer the detector is to ENEA-5. Oil1:25 l=m2 : The plasterboard with 1:25 l=m2 lin-
the oil-containing layer as could be expected. seed oil is used.
ENEA-6. Empty=oil1:25 l=m2 : The plasterboard with linseed
4.2. ENEA structure oil 1:25 l=m2 covers half DUNBID while the other half is left empty.
ENEA-7. Plasterboard=oil1:25 l=m2 : DUNBID covers half the
The experimental congurations were: bare plasterboard and half the plasterboard with 1:25 l=m2 board.
ENEA-1. Background: The gap between the front and back wall Fig. 4 shows the relative excess count rates for measurements
is empty. made with the DUNBID detector placed at a standoff distance
ENEA-2. Plasterboard: The plasterboard without oil is inserted from the front wall of 4 and 5 cm. All the data were collected with
between the two walls. an acquisition time of 60 s and a 252Cf source of 2:1  106 n=s. The
ENEA-3. Oil0:41 l=m2 : The plasterboard with 0:41 l=m2 lin- background count rate was 3150 c/s.
seed oil is placed between the two walls. The gure shows that with the NBS method slight variations in
ENEA-4. Oil0:83 l=m2 : The plasterboard with 0:83 l=m2 is oil concentration can be detected. The count rate is strongly
linseed oil placed between the two walls. dependent on the distance between the detector and the wall or
oil. Measurements done without the back wall hardly showed any
effect of plasterboard or oil. A substantial back wall proved to be
necessary to observe the effect. The large difference of the
observed effect between the Delft and the ENEA tests (30% and
15%, respectively) may be explained by the difference between the
back walls used in both setups.

4.3. NBS images

The intensity of the back scattered neutrons can be determined

Fig. 4. Excess count rates relative to the background for distances DUNBID-front-
wall of 4 and 5 cm.
as a function of position using the position sensitivity of DUNBID.
The resulting images will be blurry because of the scattering of
the neutrons in the wall structures but may still give important
information about the distribution of the hydrogenous materials.
The sensitivity over the image varies strongly as the edges/corners

Fig. 5. Images of the backscattered neutron ux obtained with DUNBID. Corrections for background and sensitivity variations have been applied as mentioned in the text.
The intensity in the images is an indication for the oil content on the boards. Intensity 1.0 corresponds to a bare plasterboard ENEA-2. The two bottom images represent the
results for the congurations ENEA-6 (left) and ENEA-7 (right). All images have the same intensity scale.
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70 V.R. Bom et al. / Applied Radiation and Isotopes 68 (2010) 6670
get less primary neutrons compared to the center because of the
central position of the source. Corrections have been applied by
subtraction of the background image to remove the scattering
from the bricks followed by a division by the background-
subtracted plasterboard image to correct for the sensitivity
variations. Fig. 5 shows DUNBID images obtained in this way
with the ENEA tests. The images have been compressed into 5  5
pixels to improve statistics, giving a resolution of 10  10 cm2 .
A pixel value of 1.0 would correspond to plasterboard. The two top
images show results obtained with the plasterboards with 0:41
and 1:25 l=m2 oil concentrations. The pixel values for the
0:41 l=m2 are around 1.0, indicating that such small oil
concentrations can hardly be distinguished from plasterboard
without oil.
The pixel values for the 1:25 l=m2 board are clearly above 1
showing the effect of the oil. The two bottom images in Fig. 5
show the two mixed compositions: ENEA-6 (to the left) and ENEA-
7 (to the right). The lack of counts is obvious in the left-hand part
of the image of the ENEA-6 conguration where there was no
board. In the image of the ENEA-7 combination the left-right
difference is still noticeable.
4.4. Uncertainties
The uncertainties in the results due to counting statistics are
small: 0.003 for the ENEA tests and 0.004 for the Delft tests. The
main source of errors is the variation in the distance of the NBS
detector to the wall since back scattering from the wall itself is the
main count rate source. A correction for distance variations can be
applied by measuring the standoff and careful calibration. The
effects of variations in the wall structures, possibly due to uneven
brick size or to irregular joints, are small because of the
considerable scattering and diffusion of the neutrons through
the structures that will average out small scale irregularities.
5. Safety
The time during which the wall is irradiated in one single
position is of the order of minutes thanks to the high speed of
operation of the NBS method. The radioactivity that is induced in
the wall structure is therefore only short living and is far below
the legal limits.
The radioactivity of a brick similar to the ones used for the
ENEA structure was measured before and after irradiation with
the source that was used for the ENEA tests. Gamma ray
measurements were performed of the natural radioactivity for
24 h. Then the brick was irradiated from a distance as used in the
tests for 7 days and measured again for 24 h. Two isotopes were
formed by this irradiation: 24Na T1=2 14:9 h and 56Mn
T1=2 2:6 h. These two isotopes decay quickly and were detect-
able only after an irradiation time of many hours, long enough to
reach the saturation activity. DUNBID requires a measurement
time that is more than two orders of magnitude smaller.
The 2:1  106 n=s Cf neutron source gave a dose rate at a
distance of 1 m of 5 mSv=h. This is below the allowed dose rate of
10 mSv=h for radiological workers. DUNBID will be mounted on a
10 m high scaffolding for the experiments in the Palazzo Vecchio.
The dose rate at the oor in that case will be only 0:05 mSv=h,
which is far below the allowed rate for public.
6. Conclusion
It is certain that Leonardo Da Vinci made a painting on a wall in
the Palazzo Vecchio. What materials he used and in what
concentrations remains uncertain, but an educated guess can be
made among others from still existing shopping lists. The setups
used in the tests described here were based on these guesses and
variations in the setups were applied to cover a wide range of
paint materials and concentrations.
The wall with the BoA mural may contain sections with and
without preparation layers and the prepared sections may be
painted or unpainted. It has been demonstrated that the NBS
device DUNBID may be applied successfully to search of the
prepared sections, painted or not, because the base layers give a
strong signal. The painted sections may also be found since the
concentration of painting materials used by Leonardo Da Vinci
likely is within the range of the concentrations used in these tests.
DUNBIDs imaging capabilities may prove useful in distinguishing
the various sections. The DUNBID NBS system may thus be
successfully applied in the search for the Battle of Anghiari
painting.
Acknowledgements
We thank Prof. DuVarney, Emory University Department of
Physics, for suggesting the use of neutron techniques to detect the
presence of pigments behind the masonry front wall in 2005. Prof.
DuVarney has been a consultant to the project since then.
The University of California starting from 2007 has supported
Prof. Seracinis efforts to pursue the search for the lost mural with
neutron techniques after appointing him Scientic Director of
CISA3: Center of interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and
Archaeology.
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