Old oil paintings are a precious but vulnerable part of our cultural heritage. Paint binders, such as linseed oil, were used by the old masters to help keep paint pigments in place. However years of environmental stressors and restoration treatments have caused the chemical interactions of these binding polymers with the metal pigments in the paint to degrade, threatening the integrity of these paintings. 

In this talk, Piet will dive into the use of polymer network models at different scales - from atomistic to microscopic - to understand the chemistry and migration of products caused by degredation processes in such paintings, and the use of these models in modern art conservation. 

About Piet 

Piet Iedema is a Professor of Chemistry at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, working in the area of polymer modeling and oil paint degradation, where he has authored over one hundred papers. For more than ten years, he has collaborated with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam on various projects concerning cultural heritage.