^a Arvedi Laboratory of Non-Invasive Diagnostics, CISRiC, University of Pavia, Via Bell’Aspa 3, 26100, Cremona, Italy

^b Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia, Corso G. Garibaldi 178, 26100, Cremona, Italy

^c Department of Physics, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy

^d Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia, Via T. Taramelli 12, 27100 Pavia, Italy

^e Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, University of Parma, Corso M. D’Azeglio 85, 43125, Parma, Italy

Email:giacomo.fiocco@unipv.it

Keywords: technology, art

“I Promessi Sposi” were written by Alessandro Manzoni between 1821 and 1842, when the final version called “Quarantana” was published. During this twenty-year period, Manzoni returned to the original manuscripts several times to add, remove, and modify parts of the text. Nowadays the large part of the original manuscripts is preserved in the Biblioteca Braidense of Milan and, for the first time, were investigated through spectroscopic and imaging techniques by two groups of University of Pavia and University of Milan.

The project, at its preliminary stage, is aimed at investigating and characterizing the composition of the inks, as well as studying the erasures that Manzoni made on his handwritten manuscripts of the introduction (1821, Manz.V.S.XI.1) and chapter 7 (1823-25, Manz.B.III) (Figure 1a) of “I Promessi Sposi” novel. In addition, other rare writings, named “Modi di dire irregolari” (Manz.B.IX.4), and two annotated books (Manz.11.0085 and Manz.11.0090) (Figure 1b) were studied to compare the inks and possibly read notes under erasures. To these purposes, X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and FTIR in reflection geometry (FTIR-R) spectroscopies [1] were performed in-situ to obtain molecular and elemental information together with UV-Vis-IR multiband high-resolution imaging [2] to highlight specific manuscript features related to writing media, erasures and paper conservation.

By combining results of the non-invasive, multi-analytical and portable techniques, relevant information about the composition of the different inks used by Manzoni in the manuscripts were achieved, shedding light on the overwritings that will help scholars in reading the text hidden by Alessandro Manzoni (Figure 1b).