Biodeterioration of Salón de Reinos, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain

Abstract

The Salón de Reinos, a remnant of the 17th century Palacio del Buen Retiro, was built as a recreational residence under the reign of Felipe IV between 1632 and 1640 and was the main room for the monarch’s receptions. This Salón owes its name to the fact that the coats of arms (shields) of the 24 kingdoms that formed Spain in Felipe IV’s time were painted on the vault, above the windows. In addition, the ceiling shows an original decorative composition. The painted ceiling and window vaults showed deterioration evidenced by fissures, water filtration, detachments of the paint layer, and black stains denoting fungal colonization related to humidity. Ten strains of bacteria and 14 strains of fungi were isolated from the deteriorated paintings. Their biodeteriorative profiles were detected through plate assays. The most frequent metabolic functions were proteolytic and lipolytic activities. Other activities, such as the solubilization of gypsum and calcite and the production of acids, were infrequent among the isolates.

Black Fungi and Stone Heritage Conservation: Ecological and Metabolic Assays for Evaluating Colonization Potential and Responses to Traditional Biocides

“…Moreover, the identification and characterization of monument settlers from a physiological and ecological point of view is of the utmost importance in order to design preventive control methods and biocide treatments [21,36,[43][44][45]. From this perspective, an increasing number of papers propose traditional metabolic plate assays as a useful, easy and cost-effective tool to unveil the potential risk tied to some cultural heritage settlers [30,36,[46][47][48][49][50]. Such a proposal is confirmed in this work.…”

Identification of Microorganisms Dwelling on the 19th Century Lanna Mural Paintings from Northern Thailand Using Culture-Dependent and -Independent Approaches

“…Arthrobacter genera were also found on material surfaces and mural paintings, and their biofilm formation can overlay the painting surface, leading to rosy discoloration of the mural painting [ 78 , 79 , 80 ]. Moreover, Cladosporium genera, which can be isolated from the mural paintings, have been reported to grow over the painting surface and cause harm to the surface layer of the painting ( Table S3 ) [ 10 , 24 , 81 , 82 , 83 ]. Many factors contribute to the biodeterioration capacity of microorganisms including pigment formation, enzymatic secretion and organic acid excretion.…”

Life on the wall: the diversity and activity of microbes on 13th – century AD. Lan Na mural painting

“…Bacillus and Virgibacillus were the major members of the bacterial community. Bacillus and related genera (i.e., Paenibacillus ) were also reported on mural paintings in Germany ( Gorbushina et al, 2004 ), Spain ( Jurado et al, 2021 ), and also in other Lan Na’s mural paintings in Thailand ( Suphaphimol et al, 2022 ). However, the abundance of Bacillus is not new, as they are ubiquitous bacteria which can be found in any environment.…”