Bio-Restoration of Mural Paintings Using Viable Cells of &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Pseudomonas stutzeri&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; and Characterization of These Murals

Abeer Fouad Elhagrassy

doi:10.11648/j.ija.20190701.12

Abstract

In the 19th-century Egypt had a strong earthquake leads to damage of several mural paintings. Mural paintings in Ali kadkhoda house (El Rabiemaya), in Cairo, Egypt were among the affected. According to these damages the mural paintings were pre-consolidated and covered by medical gauze and animal glue as an adhesive under extremely dangerous conditions. The traditional conservation methodology as hot water, and acrylics that carried on these mural paintings to strip the medical gauze and animal glue showed no positive results and caused removal of the pigments. Viable bacterial cells of Pseudomonas stutzeri, were used with Broth- animal glue media mixed with agar as a delivery system (gel material) to remove the polymerized animal glue only in 3hours at 35°C. The effectiveness of the bio-cleaning test was assessed. The results confirmed the success of this cleaning biotechnology to remove the animal glue as an organic matter without side effects on the mural paintings pigments. The Bio-restoration technique was safe, low-cost, non-invasive, time saving, and risk-free. Silver nano particles were used to sterilization the mural paintings after final step in the bio-restoration process to insure the death of bacterial cells. At the end, the mural paintings were characterized using SEM-EDX, FTIR, and XRD.

Highlights

Monuments and Mural paintings in Egypt, after the earthquake in 1992, were damaged by the strong vibrations, theorize impendence for losing these mural paintings
Abeer Fouad ElHagrassy: Bio-Restoration of Mural Paintings Using Viable Cells of Pseudomonas stutzeri and Characterization of These Murals replica was covered by the Pseudomonas stutzeri which was distributed over the surface and covered by hydrophilic cotton layer and left for different period (30, 60, 90, 120, 180 minutes)
Results in this study showed that the growth of P. stutzeri in temperature less than 20°C has no effect and the optimum temperatures for the bacterial growth was between (30 and 35°C)

Summary

Introduction

Monuments and Mural paintings in Egypt, after the earthquake in 1992, were damaged by the strong vibrations, theorize impendence for losing these mural paintings. 2. A committee for protecting the cultural heritage stored all these damage mural with medical gauze and animal glue as an adhesive to prevent any further damage Figure. Some of these mural paintings are left until now without any conservation treatments. Ali katkhoda house is one of these buildings that its murals were treated by this technique and kept from 1992-2014. This house (known as El Rabiemaya) is located in Darb Al-Hajar Street. All the walls in the second floor are decorated with several mural paintings with different fields. All the walls in the second floor are decorated with several mural paintings with different fields. [1]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion