University of Pannonia, Faculty of Information Technology
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems

LED4Art project: High Quality and Energy Efficient LED Lighting for the Art

Project Identifier: EU FP7-ICT-PSP-2010-5.
Duration: 01.01.2012 - 31.12.2014
Contacts: János Schanda, DSc, Professor Emeritus; Ferenc Szabó, PhD, Senior Lecturer

Project Partners

  • OSRAM GmbH - Germany
  • Fabertechnika    - Italy
  • Catalonia Institute for Energy Research - Spain
  • Museo Cittá del Vaticano - Italy
  • University of Pannonia - Hungary

Aims

The European Commission funded a pilot flagship project (LED4ART), which has the aim to demonstrate that high quality and energy efficient museum lighting based on LEDs is possible in 2014. The place of demonstration is one of the top ten museums in the world: the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Our consortium consists of 6 partners from 5 countries, in charge of renewing the lighting system of the Sistine Chapel. Members of the consortium are OSRAM, the Vatican City State, OSRAM Italy, the Energy Research Institute of Catalonia (IREC), Fabertechnika and University of Pannonia. The role of the Virtual Environment and Imaging Technologies Research Laboratory in this project is to determine the LED spectral power distribution in order to present the world-famous frescoes to the visitors in the form as the artist imagined them. Beside this aspect, art preservation and energy efficiency are also important issues. The project has been started in 2012 with the evaluation of the old lighting system and going to reach the final aims in the summer of 2014.

WP Structure of the Project

Our Task in the Project

  • Optimized spectral power distribution according to museum lighting application (optimization for pigment reflectance data used by renaissance frescos),
  • Evaluation of optimal luminance level according to art preservation and visitors requirements,
  • Tunable spectrum - colour appearance "as the artist seen" ( in case of daylight spectra)

Results

  • On-site measurements of luminance levels of frescos in the Sistine Chapel,
  • On-site measurements of pigment reflection spectra on frescos in the Sistine Chapel,
  • Development of a new Light Source Colour Quality metric for the Sistine Chapel,
  • Optimized light source spectral power distribution with the help of tunable, multi-channel LED luminaires,
  • Publications related to LED4ARt project: 12