Contribution of surface state characterization to studies of works of art

This paper has two purposes. The first one underlines that qualitative and quantitative studies of surface states lead to relevant information for analyzing works of art, with lots of potential for art history, restorers, and curators. The discrimination between different artistic techniques and the influence of a varnish on the leveling of paint surfaces are presented. The second purpose is the comparison between different nondestructive optical topographic methods, i.e., goniophotometry, optical coherence topography, and confocal microscopy, according to their accuracy, their discriminatory ability, their practicability inside a museum, and the size limits of the studied objects. [c] 2010 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 030.5770, 100.6950, 240.6700, 290.1350, 180.1655, 180.1790.