Roman Fresco Found Beneath Nineteenth-Century Painting

PARIS, FRANCE—The imaging technology used in airport security scanners has detected a previously unknown ancient Roman image beneath a nineteenth-century fresco in the collection at the Louvre Museum. “We could not believe our eyes as the image materialized on the screen. Underneath the top painting of the folds of a man’s tunic, we saw an eye, a nose, and then a mouth appear. We were seeing what likely was part of an ancient Roman fresco, thousands of years old,” said J. Bianca Jackson of the University of Rochester. The technology is now being applied to other ancient works of art.