GC-MS characterisation and identification of natural terpenic resins employed in works of art.

Natural resins were frequently employed in the past as adhesives or as components of oleo-resinous media in paintings. The identification of vegetable resins is still an open problem. The aim of this paper is to analyse by GC-MS some vegetable resins frequently employed in paintings, such as Venice turpentine, dammar, copal, elemi, in order to identify their main components in samples both raw and aged.

Characterisation of fresh and aged terpenic resins by micro-FTIR and GC-MS analyses of varnishes in XVI-XVII centuries paintings.

Resinous materials, generally added to drying oils, were often employed as final protective films in paintings, both in tempera and oil techniques. Most of the resins used in fine arts come from exudates of plants. Natural resins are mainly composed by terpenoids.

Flow field-flow fractionation and characterization of ionic and neutral polysaccharides of vegetable and microbial origin.

The flow field-flow fractionation (FlFFF) analysis of a variety of neutral as well as ionic polysaccharides from plants and micro-organisms shows the generally broad distribution in molecular size of these polymers. This result is also obtained on a commercial sample of pullulan whose size distribution appears much wider than that of any of five standard fractions of the same polymer. Clear evidence of some physico-chemical properties of the polysaccharides is given by the study of the effect of the carrier ionic strength on salep, oxidized salep and konjac, carboxymethylcellulose and hyaluronic acid.

Analysis of limette and bergamot distilled essential oils by HPLC.

This work examines the distilled essential oils of limette and bergamot in order to assess the presence of low volatile substances such as coumarins (bergapten) which, being toxic, must be eliminated before using these oils in the food industry. The quantitative determination of coumarins was carried out by spectrofluorimetric detection. The substances present in the chromatograms, obtained by HPLC with UV detection at 254 nm, were then identified.