MICROSCOPIC TECHNIQUES (SEM AND OM) AND ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO CHARACTERIZE CONSTITUTIVE MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUE OF THE WOODEN FRAMES IN SICILY

Nowadays artworks traditionally included in the category of applied or decorative arts are considered at the same level of fine arts getting over the old definition of minor art. According to this consideration an increasing number of studies and paper deals with the decorative arts and the Observatory for Decorative Arts in Italy “Maria Accascina” (OADI) was settled within the University of Palermo in order to study them. Nevertheless most studies deal with artistic and historic issues of applied arts and just few concern with the technique used, at least in the southern part of Italy. This paper is a systematic research concerning the constitutive materials and the executive techniques of wooden frames production in Sicily, a kind of artworks usually underrated and neglected so that often they were substituted or modified and today we don’t have a lot of information or we don’t know the name of their authors. As the frames are works of arts themselves as well as complements of their paintings, in this paper an exploration of several different types found in Sicily has been performed in order to better understand the evolution of shapes, functions, technical characteristics and ornamental models over the centuries. Many decorative techniques have been used on wood, with or without a preparatory layer, by applying pigments and gold or silver leaves and by inlaying ivory or mother-of-pearl, etc. Several organic binding and gluing media have been used: proteinaceous materials, drying oils, waxes, resins and vegetable gums.