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Along via Ostiensis, near the St. Paul’s Basilica, an important part of a roman cemetery was digged up in 1917 during roadworks and now it is still visible. This funerary area, where the most common typology is a small familiar building (columbarium), was dated from the 2nd century B.C. to 3rd-4th century A.D. At the end of the archaeological survey, only a little part of the funerary area was restored, provided with a covering and opened to the public. Elegant paintings of natural and mythological elements decorate most of the tombs, in some cases also connected with stucco decorations, and they constitute one of the most significant testimonies of the funerary art in Rome. Actually, an interdisciplinary research is focused to the study of the painted decorations, with the analysis of the painting technique and the pigments used. Moreover, based on the study of the successive restorations carried out during the twentieth-century and actual conservative state of the funerary building decorations, the investigation of the degradation phenomena of these architectural surfaces is in progress, in order to the monitoring, the maintenance and the conservation of these important frescos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In this paper we describe a configurable system based on laser displacement sensors for the contactless acquisition of 3D and 2D shapes of near-planar objects such as the paintings. Methods: The system is based on two single-point laser triangulation sensors, a planar robot and a suite of software for driving the sensors, acquiring and post-processing the collected data. As a demonstration of the developed system we monitored three artifacts with the different aims to monitor the elastic properties of the artworks and the effectiveness of support frames in compensating the micro-climate fluctuations: the 'Annunciazione' Antonello da Messina, the 'Paliotto di San Domenico', and the 'Portiera Oddi-Montesperelli'. Results: In the 'Annunciazione' case, the canvas response to tensioning trials was analyzed. The collected data permitted to quantify a maximum displacement of 0.9 and 1.5 mm for the tensioning tests at 1 and 2 mm, respectively. In the 'Portiera' case, the displacement difference between the left and right canvas sides was (1.0 ± 0.13)%, due to the inherent anisotropy of the material and by the structure of the artifact. In the 'Paliotto' case, instead, minor displacement variations of the gilt leather due to the environment were observed, due to the analysis conducted prior of the restoration. Conclusions: The overall obtained results demonstrated that the system is able to provide useful data for the art conservation field, with a max inaccuracy less than 100 μm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]