How To ID A Stolen Monet From A Pile Of Ashes
Monet's Waterloo Bridge McMaster University via Wikimedia Commons Artwork to ashes, microscopy to microscopy. The art world has been mourning the loss of seven paintings swiped from a Dutch museum last year--a Picasso, a Matisse and a Monet among them--whose remains authorities might have found inside a Romanian woman's stove. The famous works, if they have really been found, have been burned to a crisp, presumably to destroy evidence of the theft. So how do you figure out whether a pile of distinctly painting-like ashes belonged to the stolen artwork in question? Forensic specialists screen the scorched remains with optical and electronic microscopy, according to a New Yorker piece on the case. They look for specific materials that might come from a painting. "In an oven, you're going to be looking for things like metal, fasteners, nails, trace elements of the paints. There were some early paints that had lead in...