Using paintings to determine what colors people wore is tempting, but it has one major flaw: Dyes and painting pigments don’t match. If an artist couldn’t depict a color, he wasn’t going to show people wearing it, no matter how common it was. Conversely, if a particular paint was costly, he might use it more, regardless of how common that color was in reality.
This is a collection of notes about which pigments were available in 16th-century Ottoman Turkey, what range of colors they produced, and how expensive each pigment was. In time, I hope it will answer some questions about the relationship between painting pigments and fabric dyes.
MOLAB® meets Persia: Non-invasive study of a sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript
Chiara Anselmi, Paola Ricciardi, David Buti, Aldo Romani, Patrizia Moretti, Kristine Rose Beers, Brunetto Giovanni Brunetti, Costanza Miliani & Antonio Sgamellotti (2015) MOLAB® meets Persia: Non-invasive study of a sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript, Studies in Conservation, 60:sup1, S185-S192, DOI: 10.1179/0039363015Z.000000000223
- Blue: Ultramarine
- Red: Cinnabar
- White: Lead white
- Pink: An insect-derived anthraquinone dye
- Light Purple: An insect-derived anthraquinone dye, mixture of dye and Ultramarine
- Yellow: Orpiment
- Black (and Grey): Carbon-based black (and Lead white)
- Orange: Minium, mixture of minium and= orpiment
- Brown: Haematite, haematite and orpiment
- Green: Verdigris, Vergaut (a mixture of indigo and orpiment), a mixture of Indigo and a copper- based green?
Depictions of Prophet Solomon in Christian Icons and Ottoman Miniature Art
E.A. Şarlak & R. Onurel. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Vol. 14, No 1, pp. 321-345
This article summarizes several Turkish-language resources that would otherwise be unavailable to me. Unfortunately, the authors are less concerned than I am with documenting the specific dates each pigment was used. The images analyzed date to c. 1490, 1558, 1586, and 1595-1600, so the research should apply to the 16th century.
- Red: Red lead; vermilion or mercuric sulfide (from cinnabar), lacquer, cochineal (probably meaning kermes), madder, alder
- Green: Copper acetate, called jengar or zangar; copper (II) sulfate or saffron; copper (II) sulfate and gallnut juice
- Blue: Indigo; copper sulphate, also called eyestone or blue vitriol; ultramarine
- White: White lead
- Black Outlines: Lampblack
- Sketched Initial Outlines: Terre de sienne
A. Coccato, D. Bersani, A. Coudray, J. Sanyova, L. Moens and P. Vandenabeele, Raman spectroscopy of green minerals and reaction products with an application in Cultural Heritage research, Journal of Raman Spectroscopy, 47, 12, (1429-1443), (2016). Wiley Online Library
Analysis of Hu:rev U: Sirin, a manuscript kept in the British Library. The authors do a lousy job of dating the manuscript, giving the date simply as “16th century” but then noting that it was incomplete at the time of the (undated) artist’s death and stating that it was dedicated to Murad II, who died in 1451.
- Red: Red lead; vermilion; red lead and vermilion; some realgar
- Dark pink: Vermilion
- Pink: Vermilion (only for dark shades?); an unidentified pigment
- Yellow: Pararealgar; realgar
- Green: dark green, indigo and orpiment; dark green, indigo; malachite and azurite; lazurite; lighter greens, lazurite and white lead; one unidentifiable pigment
- Blue: Lazurite (ultramarine), described as costly; indigo in a few spots; occasionally a mixture of lazurite and indigo
- Light blue: Indigo with small amounts of lazurite and lead white
- Light violet: Unidentified pigment
- Brown: See below. There were many, many ways to make brown.
- Black: Carbon black (lampblack)
Colors achieved with different pigments:
- Lazurite: Intense blue, light green
- Malachite: azurite: Green
- Red lead: Red-brown
- Lead white: White
- Carbon black: Black
- Indigo + orpiment: Green
- Vermilion: Magenta, light pink, brown
- Vermilion + red lead: Red, brown
- Vermilion + orpiment: Brown
- Red lead + pararealgar: Light brown
- Pararealgar: Brownish red
- Vermilion + pararealgar: Brown
- Indigo: Dark green, blue
- Realgar: Yellow, brown
- Vermilion + realgar: Brown
- Indigo + lazurite: Blue
- Red lead + vermilion + indigo + lazurite: Brown
Articles to Follow Up On
- https://library.brown.edu/cds/minassian/essay_production.html
- http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/11954/1/a-baker-04-pigments.pdf – explains how pigments common in medieval European manuscripts were prepared. Since the overlap between European and Ottoman pigments was significant, this is a useful resource.
- https://sproc.org/ojs/index.php/pntsbs/article/view/282 – promising, but I need to locate the full article to date the pigments.
- https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/bk-2013-1147.ch001
- http://cool.conservation-us.org/jaic/articles/jaic30-02-002.html
- http://guides.library.columbia.edu/c.php?g=202887&p=2554839
- https://ctlsites.uga.edu/hargretthoursproject/pink-pigment-comes-from-where/
- https://digitalcommons.cnr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=facpubs