Reconstruction of the Former Interior of the Church Lucklum with XRF Imaging

Sebastian Bosch

The church in Lucklum (located in Lower Saxony, Germany) houses an outstanding collection of 209 Latin inscriptions and 156 emblematic paintings from the early eighteenth century. Artists working in Lucklum deployed a great number of emblem books from all over Europe (Germany, Italy, Spain, Flanders, the northern Netherlands, the Baltic region, etc.). The inscriptions and emblematic paintings come in various sizes and are located all over the interior of the church, on the gallery, the walls and even on the ceiling. Beneath the inscriptions and paintings, there exists an earlier layer consisting of completely different paintings and inscriptions.

With the help of XRF imaging parts of the former interior could be reconstructed non-destructively with the mobile XRF instrument ELIO. The device was coupled to a small motorised stage capable of scanning small areas with maximal dimensions of 10×10 cm. In the church the whole device was built on scaffolding in order to reach the paintings.

The results of recovered underwritings and -paintings were integrated further in an immersive virtual reality (VR) representation that displays the intensity images of the hidden layers as overlays on top of the virtual interior of the church.

Figure 1 Intensity images (© S. Bosch) of hidden layers overlayed on top of painting (© J. A. Steiger). left: no overlay, middle: 50% opacity, right: full opacity overlay.

References

Bosch, S. (2021), ‘X-ray fluorescence imaging data for the reconstruction of emblematic inscriptions in the interior of the Church Lucklum [Data set]’, <http://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.14457>.
Gabel, J., C. Berns, S. Bosch, J. Eickmeyer, K. Harter-Uibopuu, N. Martin, A. O. Osthof, J. A. Steiger, and F. Steinicke, F (2021), ‘User-centered design of immersive research applications for understanding written artefacts,’ in J. Orlosky, D. Reiners and B. Weyers (eds), ICAT-EGVE 2021 - International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, The Eurographics Association, 31–35 <https://doi.org/10.2312/egve.20211325>.
Gabel, J., C. Berns, S. Bosch, J. Eickmeyer, K.Harter-Uibopuu, N. Martin, A. Osthof, J. Steiger and F. Steinicke (2022), ‘Immersive inscribed spaces – Bringing virtuality to written artefacts for humanities’, i-com, 21/1: 7–18 <https://doi.org/10.1515/icom-2022-0012>.