Spectroscopic and Imaging Analyses on Easel Paintings by Giovanni Santi

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper "Spectroscopic and imaging analyses on easel paintings by Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father" is well written and the experiments were well designed and executed. This case study is elaborated by different analytical techniques and multivariate statistical analysis. However, several aspects need to be clarified.

1 The reference or reference spectra are missing in the comparison with the experimental spectra.

2 The chemical composition of the pigment is missing in the ED-XRF results. The authors should mension the elements found in the XRF spectra correspond to the pigment and the difference between the pigments with the same or trace elements, the creteria of pigment determination.

3 in the keywords, the authors mention "multispectral imaging" which is misleading. I think the authors meant "IR imaging" with different spectral ranges.

4 In the microscopic images (digital micrographs), the scales are missing.

5 Pay attention to the number format, the decimal is "." not ",".

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We thank you for the revisions of our manuscript number: applsci-2260132.

We submitted our revised manuscript entitled “Spectroscopic and imaging analyses on easel paintings by Giovanni Santi” which my colleagues and I revised after addressing the reviewer's comments for publication in Applied Sciences Journal.

The manuscript has been modified as suggested by the reviewers and the changes have been approved by all authors as shown below.

Yours sincerely,

Urbino, March 8th, 2023         

                                                                       Maria Letizia Amadori

Manuscript Number: applsci-2260132
Spectroscopic and imaging analyses on easel paintings by Giovanni Santi

Reviewer 1 comments: 

Reviewer #: The paper "Spectroscopic and imaging analyses on easel paintings by Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father" is well written and the experiments were well designed and executed. This case study is elaborated by different analytical techniques and multivariate statistical analysis. However, several aspects need to be clarified.

Reviewer #: 1 The reference or reference spectra are missing in the comparison with the experimental spectra.

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we introduced them.

Reviewer #: 2 The chemical composition of the pigment is missing in the ED-XRF results. The authors should mention the elements found in the XRF spectra correspond to the pigment and the difference between the pigments with the same or trace elements, the criteria of pigment determination.

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we added both the composition of the pigments in the text and the supplementary tables related to ED-XRF composition (Tables S8a-S8f).

Reviewer #: 3 In the keywords, the authors mention "multispectral imaging" which is misleading. I think the authors meant "IR imaging" with different spectral ranges.

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we changed with IR imaging

Reviewer #: 4 In the microscopic images (digital micrographs), the scales are missing.

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we introduced them

Reviewer #: 5 Pay attention to the number format, the decimal is "." not ",".

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we corrected tables 1, 2.1 and 3.2 paragraphs

Reviewer 2 Report

Ref "spectroscopic and imaging analyses on easel painting…" by M. L. Amadori et al.

This manuscript is devoted to the analysis of the work of Giovanni Santi. It is a well-written work with a significant amount of data, and well treated. All developed within the framework of the Renaissance. It deserves to be published; however, there are some comments that merit to be answered.

1) In relation to the title. Santi's work is in itself valuable, as the manuscript shows, it is not necessary to mention Raphael. This mention reduces the value of work and is unnecessary.

2) The journal Appl. Sci. is of a general nature. In this sense, details regarding pigments such as Azurite and others should be mentioned (descriptions: composition, places of origin, geographical production at that time, trade, etc.). This will also give a geographical and commercial context. I mean, at least a few small paragraphs. Additionally, it will be more attractive to the future reader.

3) In general, graphs 5b and 6b (measured points) should be clearly descriptive. I mean, they are of poor quality. Maybe if they get bigger?

4) Section 4 (discussion) and section 5 (conclusions) are very well written and clarifying and inspiring. These concepts (and conjectures) are missed in the summary that, essentially, deals with data.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We thank you for the revisions of our manuscript number: applsci-2260132.

We submitted our revised manuscript entitled “Spectroscopic and imaging analyses on easel paintings by Giovanni Santi” which my colleagues and I revised after addressing the reviewer's comments for publication in Applied Sciences Journal.

The manuscript has been modified as suggested by the reviewers and the changes have been approved by all authors as shown below.

Yours sincerely,

Urbino, March 8th, 2023         

                                                                       Maria Letizia Amadori

Manuscript Number: applsci-2260132
Spectroscopic and imaging analyses on easel paintings by Giovanni Santi

Reviewer 2 comments: 

Reviewer #: This manuscript is devoted to the analysis of the work of Giovanni Santi. It is a well-written work with a significant amount of data, and well treated. All developed within the framework of the Renaissance. It deserves to be published; however, there are some comments that merit to be answered.

Reviewer #: 1 In relation to the title. Santi's work is in itself valuable, as the manuscript shows, it is not necessary to mention Raphael. This mention reduces the value of work and is unnecessary.

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we removed the name Raphael from the title.

Reviewer #: 2 The journal Appl. Sci. is of a general nature. In this sense, details regarding pigments such as Azurite and others should be mentioned (descriptions: composition, places of origin, geographical production at that time, trade, etc.). This will also give a geographical and commercial context. I mean, at least a few small paragraphs. Additionally, it will be more attractive to the future reader.

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we added the composition of the pigments in the text. Unfortunately, the non-invasive analyses don’t allow provenance study but we are carrying out micro-invasive analyses which could give more information but not enough to hypothesize the geographic and commercial context. This issue is extremely complex and needs specific investigations such as isotopic and trace elements analyses but in the case of Culture Heritage usually is not possible to have enough samples to do it.

Reviewer #: 3 In general, graphs 5b and 6b (measured points) should be clearly descriptive. I mean, they are of poor quality. Maybe if they get bigger?

Authors: The plots are quite crowded due to the huge number of points measured: we’ve re-drawn the dendrograms enhancing them as much as possible the texts within the limit imposed by the layout of the page.

Reviewer #: 4 Section 4 (discussion) and section 5 (conclusions) are very well written and clarifying and inspiring. These concepts (and conjectures) are missed in the summary that, essentially, deals with data.

Authors: Thanks for pointing this out, we improved the abstract by adding some useful elements.