Spanish mother and daughter experts 'train' bacteria to restore paintings

Spanish microbiologist Pilar Bosch stumbled upon the possibility that bacteria could be used in art restoration, her mother's field.

At the same time, her mother, Pilar Roig , was busy restoring 18th-century paintings by artist Antonio Palomino at the Santos Juanes church, one of the oldest churches in Valencia, Spain's third-largest city.

She found it particularly difficult to remove the glue left on the frescoes after they were removed from the church walls during restoration work in the 1960s.

'My mother had a very difficult problem to solve and I found an article about the bacteria used to clean frescoes in Italy,' said Bosch, 42, who completed her doctoral thesis on the project.

Pilar Bosch (right) and her mother Pilar Roig (center) with project director Jose Luis Regidor at a museum in Valencia, Spain. (Photo: Reuters).

And more than a decade later, the mother and daughter are collaborating on a €4 million project, funded by local organisations, to use some of the techniques to restore works of art in Valencia.

Microbiologists train bacteria by feeding them samples of glue made from animal collagen . The bacteria then naturally produce enzymes to break down the glue.

They mixed the bacteria with a natural algae gel and applied it to paintings that had been removed from walls in the 1960s, then nailed back in. After three hours, the bacteria had broken down the glue, and the gel was removed, revealing the paintings without the glue.

'Before, we used to do it manually, which was horrible, with warm water and sponges, which took hours and sometimes ruined the painting,' said Ms Roig, now 75, whose father, grandfather and other relatives also worked in art conservation .

Bosch has also used bacteria in restoration projects in Pisa and Monte Cassino in Italy, as well as in Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. She is currently training different groups of bacteria to remove graffiti from walls.