Their findings follow an in-depth study undertaken by researchers from the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, the Wawel Royal Castle, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

The project saw a detailed analysis of paint cracks featured in a range of Renaissance-era works and yielded a range of discoveries. Researchers had initially sought to explain how networks of cracks had been allowed to form in the paintings, thereby putting an end to years of speculation.

The study allowed scientists to understand how and why such crack networks are formed and why they differ from painting to painting.

Professor Łukasz Bratasz said: “The material properties, as well as the climate in which the objects have been stored, largely determine the type of cracks that appear. The network of cracks develops differently in a painting created in southern Italy than one painted in Norway.”

Continuing, he added, “The cracks are also influenced by the thickness of the paint layer and the arrangement of these layers. That’s why some crack networks are characteristic of differing art school and the periods in which they were created.”

Significantly, Bratasz stated that the findings could now be utilized to filter out numerous forgeries that are circulating in the art world.

“We can see which crack networks are a result of accelerated aging, a technique used by counterfeiters, and which ones have developed naturally. This opens the way to the creation of completely new tools when it comes to the authentication of objects.”

The project also aimed to find solutions concerning the protection of works suffering from deep cracks. However, to do this, researchers first had to determine the properties of the materials that had been used by the artists.

“Engineers can open a book and easily find properties of materials relating to their work, but in the case of cultural objects, we’ve never known, for example, the properties of Leonardo’s paints. This was the goal of the project. For the first time ever, we determined the properties of egg tempera, so important to Italian painting,” said Bratasz.

Of the discoveries that were made over the course of the study, Bratasz says that even the way in which paintings are stored now stands to change.

“We’ve learned that objects with developed cracks don’t need very restrictive conditions,” he said. “This opens the way to reducing energy consumption in museums and promoting the idea of green museums.”