Correlation of Vulnerability and Conservation Between Artistic Assets and Structural Elements: Campaign of Thermographic Surveys on the Frescoes of the Templar Church of San Bevignate

Abstract

A museum, an art collection and a heritage architecture all in one the former Church of San Bevignate is a 39.5m long masonry building that overlooks the countryside of the Umbria Region in Italy. Part of a Templar complex of the 13th century located in Perugia, it holds within a precious series of frescoes, depicting the heroic deeds of the temple's knights across crossings and borders. The safeguard of historical buildings in seismic hazard-prone Regions, as in this case, needs specific measures due, amongst other reasons, to the presence of artistic assets unmovable precisely as frescoes, valuable plasters/stuccoes or in general wall decorations. Therefore, to define a correlation of the seismic risks between masonry structural systems and artworks is a mandatory condition in order to perform safety evaluation and to identify the proper conditions for possible interventions. The efforts made to increase the level of knowledge concerning such buildings mainly through Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) are also important for such purposes. In this context, a non-invasive and contactless method was devised, which integrates the use of the thermal imaging camera with post-processing techniques and calculation algorithms, aimed at revealing the peculiarities inherent in the walls decorated with frescoes: a little-known possibility to bring out important factors for the conservation of the frescoes and also information on the seismic vulnerability of such historical masonry architectures in order to preserve the artefact from being damaged.