From ‘Vermeer Illuminated’ to ‘The Girl in the Spotlight’: approaches and methodologies for the scientific (re-)examination of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring

Heritage Science

Table 2 Analyses performed on micro-samples in the 1990s [4], and in 2018

Micro-sample analysis	Abbreviation	Reference for experimental method
Cross-sections		[4, 8, 12,13,14]
Direct temperature-resolved mass spectrometry	DTMS	[4]
Focused ion beam-scanning transmission electron microscopy	FIB-STEM	[8, 12, 14]
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy	FTIR	[4]
Fourier transform infrared–attenuated total reflectance spectroscopy	FTIR-ATR	[12, 13]
High performance liquid chromatography	HPLC	[4]
Lead isotope analysis		[12]
Light microscopy	LM	[4, 8, 12,13,14]
Paint micro-samples		[4, 8, 12,13,14]
Polarised light microscopy	PLM	[4]
Pyrolysis-tetramethylammonium hydroxide-gas chromatography mass spectrometry	Py-TMAH-GCMS	[4]
Scanning electron microscopy–energy dispersive X-ray analysis	SEM–EDX	[8, 12,13,14]
Secondary ion mass spectrometry	SIMS
Synchrotron: microscopic X-ray powder diffraction	µ-XRPD	[11, 12]
Synchrotron: microscopic X-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy	µ-XANES	[13]
Thermally assisted hydrolysis and methylation, pyrolysis gas chromatography–mass spectrometry	THM-Py-GC/MS	[14]
Thin-layer chromatography	TLC	[4]
Ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with a photo diode array, attached to a fluorescence detector	UHPLC-PDA-FLR	[12,13,14]