Geomatics techniques for the enhancement and preservation of cultural heritage

The deep knowledge of Cultural Heritage, with historical research and interpretative analysis of materials, is fundamental to know the state of conservation and to plan potential restoration interventions. In the last years, thanks to the fast and continuous technological development, the metrical survey had a significant increase in this particular field: in fact, 3D digital acquisition allows to study some aspects otherwise difficult to investigate in a detailed way.

In this research, we will explain the methodology used for the ceiling’s survey of the Sala Capitolare of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, focusing on the support structure of Tintoretto’s paintings, anchored to a wooden system of Palladian trusses. The complexity of this Venetian architecture, its considerable dimension, the richness of decorations and the particular lighting conditions provided the opportunity of thinking about unconventional choices to apply from time to time and they required the integration of different methodologies: the laser scanning survey and the photogrammetric acquisition, together with a topographic network, allowed to obtain an adequate metric result for the study of the structure in its entirety. Furthermore, it was also decided to test image acquisition with a spherical camera for the documentation of the analysed architecture: this type of information, more related to a viewable aspect than to a metric one, can be presented together with traditional 2D representations to ensure a better enhancement of the achieved results.