Venerable automaker Alfa Romeo celebrates its 110th anniversary in less than 10 days. In honor of the occasion, the company has released an e-book about its history from car models to its iconic logo incorporating the famous dragon eating a man, the emblem of the Visconti family which once ruled the city of Milan.

The first car was manufactured in 1910 when the company was still an acronym, A.L.F.A. (Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, meaning “Lombard Automobile Factory, Public Company”). The 42 HP could reach an impressive-for-the-time top speed of 62 miles per hour. Fifty of them were sold in the first year. The engine was strong enough to power a prototype biplane made of bicycle tubes.

A.L.F.A. built on the success of the 42 HP and quickly grew. By 1915 it had 2,500 employees manufacturing three models. Then came World War I. The factory was converted to wartime production — aircraft engines, munitions, compressors — until 1919 when Alfa resumed car production. With the new cars came a new name as Nicola Romeo, an engineer and entrepreneur who had acquired a majority of shares in 1915 and all of them by 1918, added his name to the brand. The first car to come off the line bearing the Alfa Romeo imprimatur was the 1921 Torpedo 20/30 HP.

This was the decade when Alfa made its bones in racing. Its first racing team included a certain Enzo Ferrari as a driver. Alfa’s innovations won it the most prestigious races of the time, the Le Mans, Mille Miglia and a myriad Grands Prix. They also made for some amazing looking cars, ones like the Tipo B Aerodinamica (1934) and the 8C 2900 Le Mans (1938) that wouldn’t be remotely out of place in a superhero’s secret cave lair.

Automobile production came to a halt again during the Second World War, but when it resumed in April 1945, it resumed with a bang. The first post-war Alfa Romeo was the Freccia d’Oro (Golden Arrow) produced in 1947 and beloved by crowned heads and Hollywood stars alike. Icons like the Spider and Giulia followed.

But it’s the prototypes that thrill me the most. The 1952 prototype Disco Volante (“flying saucer”) really does look like it should be dropping from the belly of a mothership. The greatest discovery in this ebook for me, however, is the 40-60 HP “Aerodinamica,” which was a private commission from Count Marco Ricotti in 1914. It was made entirely of lightweight aluminum and was shaped like a torpedo with porthole-style windows. The chassis and engine were exactly the same as the ones in the 40-60 HP production series, but the body was a pioneering attempt to harness the principles of aviation design for a land-going vehicle. It could reach a top speed of 86 mph, 12 miles faster than the standard 40-60 HP, thanks to its unique body confirmation. The tear-drop shape earned it the moniker Siluro (“torpedo”) Ricotti.

Alas, Count Ricotti chose … poorly. He had the car modified, some might say butchered, into a goofy roofless excursion vehicle. What was left of it after that did not survive. Alfa Romeo sought to remedy this cruel state of affairs and in 1979 commissioned an exact replica of the great Siluro recreated from the original designs. Recreating that torpedo body was more challenging as it had been produced by a separate company, the Carrozzeria Castagna, and no original designs for it exist. The Carrozzeria Castagna did have a photo in its archives of the Siluro’s manufacture, which gave the reconstruction team the information needed to replicate an accurate skeleton and external form. The new Siluro, a copy of the original in all its details including the unbelievable “damascene” finish of the aluminum, is now on display at the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese, Milan. The museum reopens after the long Italian lockdown on June 24th, Alfa Romeo’s 110th birthday.

A study of early Colonial wall paintings found in private homes in Chajul, Guatemala, has revealed they were painted by local Ixil Maya artists using a combination of traditional techniques and European motifs. They are rare surviving glimpses into the shift in cultural practice and iconography from the pre-Hispanic Maya to the Spanish Colony.

Chajul was an important regional center before it was conquered by Spain in 1530. A vase from the Late Classic period (600-800 A.D.) names a high official of the Chajul king, so it was a politically prominent city with its own dynasty of rulers. Most of the ancient city is believed to lie underneath the modern city, with only a few Maya structures marking the perimeter of a ballcourt found northwest of modern Chajul.

Colonial-era murals were first discovered in Chajul during a house renovation in 2003 and archaeologists from the Institute of Anthropology and History of Guatemala (IDAEH) determined they dated to the Colonial period (1524-1821). The largest and best-preserved wall paintings were discovered in the home of the Asicona family who still live there today. It was dubbed House 3.

House 3 is an adobe brick structure bound with a mixture of pine needles and mortar. The interior walls were covered with white stucco and murals painted on the surface. The presence of old murals was first detected in the 1990s but they were only small glimpses of the still-hidden whole. It was only when owner Lucas Asicona Ramírez removed the outer layers of plaster on the wall in the course of replacing the roof that the full surviving murals were revealed.

The murals decorate the north, east and west walls of the central room of House 3. The original south wall was demolished long ago, but it probably had murals as well. They depict musicians playing instruments, both local and Spanish-introduced, dancers, some wearing European clothes, some wearing mixed Indian-Spanish fashions. Chajul locals believe the murals represent dances, either the Baile de la Conquista (Dance of the Conquest), or the Baile de los Moros y Cristianos (Dance of the Moors and Christians), which are performed stories from the Spanish conquest of the Maya highlands.

In 2011 almost all the houses with murals were photographed and documented. In 2014 the large, well-preserved murals in House 3 were 3D laser-scanned. In 2015, Polish researchers undertook a physical and chemical study and conservation of the extensive murals in House 3.

Using techniques including scanning electronic microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, researchers found that the methods and materials used to make the murals were the same ones used for centuries before the Spanish conquest. The color palette is type of pre-Hispanic Maya wall paintings found in the Maya Lowlands — white lime, ochre, Maya blue. The blue no longer looks blue today; it’s more like grey. The fading was caused either by a conservation problem, and/or a decline in the color-fastness of the pigment due to the loss of traditional knowledge about how to prepare it, specifically which mineral was the source of the blue color and what temperature to heat it. The underlying stucco is also the same type — local calcium carbonate mixed with ground seashells — as the stucco in widespread use during the Maya Postclassic period.

Our research to date, including interviews with Chajul inhabitants about local history and tradition, suggests that houses with murals were originally owned by important members of the local community—possibly members of the cofradías. These individuals were involved in the organisation of religious events, both those connected with Catholicism and those linked with costumbre (or Maya spirituality, related to the cult of the Maya pre-Columbian calendar and to agrarian rituals). Prior to the recent civil war in Guatemala (c. 1960–1996), there were approximately 10 cofradías in Chajul, although their number has decreased in recent years. The rooms with paintings probably served as places for important cofradía meetings and dances (cf. Howell 2004: 35).

Although the murals are currently located in domestic spaces, it is possible that in the past, painted rooms (or whole houses) might have played a different role. According to Lucas Asicona, the three rooms of house 3 had different functions in the early twentieth century. The northernmost room served as a space for receiving visitors; the central room, with the murals (at that time completely covered by later stucco), served as a place for special events, such as meetings, ceremonies and dances for the cofradía. Finally, the southernmost room was a kitchen and living room. A large patio in front of the house provided another space for dances. This division seems to reflect the original seventeenth-/eighteenth-century layout and function of the house. It should be noted that some other Chajul city houses with wall paintings have been—or still are—used as meeting places for cofradía members. Thus, it is very plausible that most, if not all, of the houses with murals belonged to cofradía members and served as important places for meeting and dance. As such, the paintings from these locations may commemorate special events, particularly dances, practised by these important religious and social organisations.

As plants and animals absorb carbon dioxide during their lifetimes, they absorb the unstable isotope carbon-14 with it. When they die, the carbon exchange stops and the C14 isotopes start to decay at a steady rate. Radiocarbon dating works by measuring the amount of carbon-14 present in organic archaeological materials and comparing it to reference standards. Now for the first time, researchers have been able to radiocarbon date an inorganic pigment to date wall paintings from the Late Middle Ages. This breakthrough technique makes it possible to get absolute dates for paintings from antiquity through the 19th century, a huge boon to conservators, art historians and authenticators.

Paintings made before the 20th century usually incorporate organic ingredients like vegetable oils or egg binders, but binders are often contaminated over the years by varnishes and retouches and the carbon content is too low to test. The wood of panel paintings, the wood supports of canvas paintings, the canvas itself can be radiocarbon dated and indeed frequently are in authentication investigations, but the C14 information pertains to the date the wood or plant was harvested, not when the painting was made per se.

Murals have no organic backings or binders, so the only possible route for absolute dating are the pigments in the paint layers themselves. Most ancient pigments have no carbon content. Only carbon black, made from charcoal, has been radiocarbon dated before.

Two widespread white pigments – calcium carbonate and lead white – are carbonate-based pigments and contain carbon. Both are considered as mineral pigments, but are produced differently. Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is a natural pigment extracted from quarries. It was formed several million years ago from micro-organisms, but due to the 14C radioactive decay of 5700 years, geological CaCO3 no longer contains enough 14C to be radiocarbon dated. Conversely, lead white is synthesized. Lead white, composed of cerussite (PbCO3) and hydrocerussite (Pb3(CO3)2(OH)2), has been artificially produced by lead corrosion since Antiquity. This corrosion process, involving metallic lead, vinegar and organic substances such as horse manure or tan bark, was also named the stack or Dutch process when mass production started from the 16th century on.

Lead white was widely used by painters from antiquity to Van Gogh, so being able to derive an absolute date from the pigment would open up all kinds of new possibilities. The trick was to develop a technique to separate the carbon in lead white that would leave it uncontaminated and testable. The research team devised a thermal separation system that heated the sample to 400 °C, high enough to break apart lead carbonates but low enough for the carbon release process to be monitored and controlled.

Researchers deployed the process on samples of wall paintings from the 14th century dressing room of Margaret of Bavaria in the Château de Germolles in Burgundy, and fragments from the medieval rood screen of the Church of the Cordeliers in Fribourg, Switzerland. The rood screen was destroyed in 1745 and the rubble used as fill to raise the floor for a new pavement. A 1985 restoration removed the floor and recovered 14,000 painted fragments.

The radiocarbon dates of three samples from the Château de Germolles are 1292–1401, 1283–1397, and 1300–1419. The nine fragments of the Cordeliers rood screen range in date from 1262 to 1630. These results are all consistent with the known history of the château and the church.

In this study, we demonstrate that it is possible to extract all the carbon from lead carbonates by thermal decomposition in order to date lead white pigments and paintings by the radiocarbon method. The synthesis process of lead white is identified according to the 14C content and we show that the 14C isotope is therefore an important marker for reconstructing the history of lead white production. The process most commonly used over time is the corrosion process occurring in a fermenting environment. Metallic lead and vinegar were placed in pots embedded in horse manure or other organic substances. By fermentation, organic substances degrade and release CO2 that carries 14C. The organic substance are thus the key component to obtain a reliable and absolute radiocarbon date. Medieval paintings are a perfect example showing that recipes reported in historical manuscripts were applied. The radiocarbon measurements date the pigment production and provides new insights into the creation of the wall paintings.