Pump-probe imaging of historical pigments used in paintings.

A recently developed nonlinear optical pump-probe microscopy technique uses modulation transfer to sensitively extract excited-state dynamics of endogenous biological pigments, such as eumelanin and pheomelanin. In this work, we use this method to image and characterize several inorganic and organic pigments used in historical art. We show substantial differences in the near-IR pump-probe signatures from nominally similar pigments and suggest extensions to art restoration.