Outline

Most of the masterpieces of mankind have been subjected not only to decades and even centuries of exposure to the elements, but also to the pollution of our industrialized society. Estimates indicate that air pollution in the last 75 years has caused almost as much damage to art works as have the previous 500 years of ordinary wear and deterioration.
Man has been restoring art for centuries but in the last years advances in technology have created tools and diagnostic methods that are revolutionising the art conservator's field.
Performing classical cleaning requires often a lot of  time and energy and the task is normally accomplished with chemicals, scalpels or other abrasive tools, solvents, swabs or electrolysis.
The most recent cleaning technique takes advantage of the high-intensity laser light for surface treatment: the modern trend in art conservation is to remove the offensive encrustations and the old and decayed restorations, to clean and structurally preserve the authentic material of the original work.
The phenomenology associated with the selective vaporization of an optically absorbing substance from a reflective surface by means of laser radiation has been widely studied in comparison with the other methods, and the past 25 years of research and practice suggest a number of unique attributes.

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