TY - SER AU - BARREIROS,Maria-Alexandra AU - FIGUEREIDO,Maria-Ondina AU - PRUDÊNCIO,Maria-Isabel AU - SILVA,Teresa TI - Diagnosis of pathologies in ancient (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries) decorative blue-and-white ceramic tiles: Green stains in the glazes of a panel depicting Lisbon prior to the 1755 earthquake SN - 0039-3630 KW - Blue-and-white glazes KW - Esmaltes azul y blanco KW - Esmalts blau i blanc KW - Green stains KW - Manchas verdes KW - Panel de azulejos KW - Panell de rajoles KW - Segles XVII-XVIII KW - SEM-EDX KW - Seventeenth-eighteenth centuries KW - Siglos XVII-XVIII KW - Taques verdes KW - Tile panel KW - XRD KW - XRF-WDS N2 - Decorative panels of ceramic glazed tiles comprise a valuable cultural heritage in Mediterranean countries. Their preservation requires the development of a systematic scientific approach. Exposure to an open-air enviroment allows for a large span of deterioration effects. Successfully overcoming these effects demands a careful identification of involved degradation processes. Among these, the development of micro-organisms and concomitant glaze surface staining is a very common effect opbserved in panels manufactured centuries ago. This paper describes a study on the nature of green stains appearing at the surface of blue-and-white tile glazes from a large decorative panel with more than one thousand tiles, called Vista de Lisboa that depicts the city before the destruction caused by the 1755 earthquake. The characterization of green-stained blue-and-white tile glazes was performed using non-destructive X-ray techniques (diffraction and fluorescence spectrometry) by directly irradiating the surface of small tile fragments, complemented by a destructive scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation of one fragment. Despite the green staining, analytical X-ray data showed that no deterioration had occurred irrespective of the blue or white color, while complementary SEM-EDX data provided chemical evidence of microorganism colonization at the stained glaze surface ER -