Bindings Photo: (Flickr user Burns Library Boston CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Imaging technology is helping to reveal art and medieval manuscripts that have been hidden for hundreds of years.
The work's currently being done on handwritten paper and parchments that date back over 1,000 years, when it was common to paint over canvasses and reuse paper as a covering or spine reinforcement.
Access to these hidden libraries and pictures has been made possible by x-ray fluorescence spectrometry technology which allows texts to be read without being damaged.
Professor Joris Dik of Delft University of Technology started using the technology 8 years ago on some paintings by Vincent van Gogh.