SCIENTIST INVENTS FRESCO 'ECO-GEL'

SCIENTIST INVENTS FRESCO 'ECO-GEL'

(ANSA) - Rome, November 4 - An Italian scientist has invented an environmentally friendly gel for restoring frescos.

The so-called 'eco-gel' is 97% water with only a tiny amount of oil-based solvent that gets deeper than conventional cleaners, Florence University chemistry professor Piero Baglioni says.

''It's particularly good on frescos because it penetrates deep inside their pores,'' Baglioni says in the current edition of Angewandte Chemie, the journal of the German Chemical Society.

What's more, Baglioni says, his gel doesn't emit fumes.

''It only contains 2% of organic solvent, trapped inside the watery matrix, so it doesn't get into the air and isn't breathed in''.

The scientist patented the gel after testing it out on the frescos of Lorenzo Vecchietta, a 15th-century artist mentioned by Vasari, in Siena's Santa Maria della Scala sacristy.

Baglioni says his gel is also ''ideal'' for the awkward corners of gilded picture frames, often gummed up by resin, because it is less toxic than existing cleaners.

The 'jellified micro-emulsion' is ''an absolute novelty in the field,'' he says. photo: an art restorer at work on a Vasari fresco in Florence