#Medieval manuscripts with ultramarine full#

Of these pigments, the most interesting is the Egyptian blue.ДЇrom prehistoric times the Egyptians had been accustomed to glaze certain objects with a blue or green glaze which owed its colour to the presence of copper. It is evident, on examining this list, that a large number of the pigments are of no use for our present inquiry, as they remain common to the artists palette to the present day, and we therefore need only consider those which have dropped out of use.

#Medieval manuscripts with ultramarine full#

A very full discussion with the necessary references will be found in Ernst Bergers Die Maltechnik des Altertums, and a shorter account in my Greek and Roman Methods of Painting, with the necessary references. The existence and use of these pigments may be taken as absolutely established. It is unnecessary here to give the evidence for the above statements.

In addition, other vegetable greens, blues, purples, and reds were known. In classical times the following pigments were known: among blacks, charcoal, lamp and bone black among whites, chalk, gypsum, and white lead among yellows, yellow ochre, orpiment, and yellow vegetable pigments among reds, red ochre, cinnabar, dragons blood, red lead, and red from madder and kermes among blues, azurite and the Egyptian blue, and indigo among greens, malachite, verdigris, and terre verte and for purple the Tyrian purple.

Nothing will be gained by discussing the more obscure descriptions given by Pliny, as a sufficient number of classical pigments have been definitely recognized for our present purpose. It is necessary, in the first place, to start with a datum line of some kind from which the inquiry is to proceed, and for this purpose we cannot do better than take the list of pigments described by Pliny and Vitruvius, supplemented as their descriptions have been by the examination of the Pompeian and other classical frescoes, the analysis of pots of paint, and the examination of Egyptian pigments. In the first place, the pigments can be fairly easily identified, as they are in many cases laid on pure, and with comparatively little medium, thus lending themselves to microscopic examination and in the second place, the date of so many of these manuscripts is accurately known, and in other cases approximately known, that they form reliable records of the pigments used. Illuminated manuscripts are the best material that we have for this purpose for two reasons. This inquiry has been made into the period from the seventh to the beginning of the sixteenth century. I propose in this paper to begin by bringing together and tabulating the information at present available on the subject, and then to go on to describe the results of my examination of a large number of illuminated manuscripts at the British Museum, the Advocates Library, Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh University Library. By the careful preparation of old pigments, and their comparison with those on dated documents under the microscope, using both ordinary and polarized light, and by the devising of microscopic chemical tests, I have endeavoured to decide on the nature of the pigment without injury to the manuscript or picture. I have therefore found it necessary to devise new methods of identification. He is thus debarred from obtaining the definite information he requires if he is to make progress in this direction. The inquiry, however, presents certain obvious difficulties, as it is seldom that the chemist is allowed sufficient freedom with an ancient picture or illuminated manuscript to enable him to apply ordinary methods of analysis. Moreover, such an inquiry might result in the associating of certain pigments with certain places and schools of painting, and even with individual painters. Such information, if sufficiently complete, would be of great assistance in dating unquestionably many objects of art, and would in many cases be invaluable in detecting forgeries. It is, in the first place, a matter of considerable interest to know what pigments were in actual use at various periods in the history of Art, and how far in practice the old receipts represented the artists palette. Although a great deal of information on the subject has been collected from the examination of old records, and, in addition, by the occasional analysis of the actual pigments used, the whole subject seems to me to be deserving of a more exact inquiry than it has as yet received. DURING the history of Art, from the earliest times to the present day, certain pigments have remained common to the artists palette, and while some have dropped out of use, others have been added.