The Collection of Old Sculptures, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest owns a widely acknowledged selection of terracotta sculptures. In our research we investigated the age of 22 artefacts with the means of thermoluminescence. The main question was whether the studied sculptures are of Renaissance, Baroque or Modern age.

Equivalent dose values were determined by using the Multiple Aliquot Additive Dose Protocol. Environmental dose rate was calculated on the basis of μXRF and ICP-AES measurements and estimation of material parameters. As a consequence the error of the received ages was around 20%. However, modern copies could be filtered with great confidence, and in most of the cases thermoluminescence enabled the differentiation of Renaissance and Baroque artworks.