When dipping our brushes into medieval pigments, we should familiarize ourselves with a common form of pigments, the lake. Lakes are an organic pigment made by the reaction of a soluble dye with a mordant, a necessary fixer for dye stuff to bind with paper according to Joumana Medlej’s book, Inks and Paints of the Middle East. There must be multiple iterations of separating the precipitate from dye and drying before storage. Dyes were not commonly used in manuscripts and would typically be reserved for working with fabric. Since these pigments are organic, there are some common quirks to note. They would be prone to fading and instability, the process of pigments degrading due to the presence of heat, sunlight, and pH. The chemical compositions of specific plants harvested would affect their resulting colors. Also, they were lightly pigmented, requiring limners (otherwise known as painters) to paint multiple layers to achieve the desired color on the folio. For more information on the difference between pigment types and their stability visit Artists’ Pigments : a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics. Our colors of purple and pink focused on three pigments that could be made this way: brazilwood, cochineal, and madder.
Before we dive deeper into our research on this style of pigment and “experiment” results let’s discuss which specific pigments we chose and why. We chose not to select madder root for its lack of use as a lake in the limit of our time period, and difficulty in recreating the recipe as it would require multiple days of work, as expanded by The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. We selected cochineal for creating an easy lake despite it not being used in this time period. Our first batch developed a pungent mold and the second failed to bind with the test paper. During the in-class creation of brazilwood ink, we opted to make a dye rather than a lake because the extra step of grinding the brazilwood chips would be too tedious.
Color Variance in Lakes
Madder, despite its likely limitation of time period, is a perfect example of the color variance found while producing lakes as it has both chemical differences by region and distinct reactions to separate mordants. The following information is synthesized from the madder report in Robert Feller’s Artists’ Pigments: a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics. Ratios of organic pigment producing compounds purpurin and alizarin determine the primary color of a madder pigment; purpurin rich creates a pink while alizarin rich tends toward a light violet. Most Western European pigments are a rose-red as the Southern European examples are higher in purpurin. Mordants would affect the lakes in the following ways: chalk and alum potash produce a deep red, iron sulfate produces a deep violet, and chromium alum creates a reddish brown. The exact color produced varies by the proportions of pigment determining chemicals in specific plants and quantities of the mordant used in preparation.
Brazilwood lakes can also take on an array of hues based on the chemical reactions that occur both when it is created and when it is applied to the source. If the brazilwood is mixed with an acid, like alum, it will turn red, and if the brazilwood is mixed with an alkali, like lye, it will turn a deep purple. Similarly, the vibrancy and hue of cochineal is affected by the addition of alkali and acidic mordants. Depending on the hue you wanted, cochineal could produce colors from deep crimson to purple. Figure 1, for example, shows how the pigments can change even upon immediate contact with their source. The higher bond artist paper must be more alkaline because the pigment turned purple upon application and after drying. On the cloth-style paper and untreated parchment, however, the pigment applied red, so it was evident that there must have been acids in the two sources that kept the pigment red. Despite the addition of mordants, it was very common for these organic pigments to fade over time when used as lakes due to their instability.
Fig. 1 – On higher bond artist paper (left and top), the dye appeared pink and was applied quite effortlessly. On the cloth-style paper (middle), a clear red was made. On the untreated parchment (right), a deep red was deposited after layering the dye.
Lake Pigments in Medieval Manuscripts:
After looking at the borrowed manuscripts in the Special Collections Library, we were able to find the use of purple penwork in one specific manuscript: TM 339, the Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences. It is from Northern Italy in the fifteenth century (1479 to be precise), and it is a decorated manuscript on both parchment and paper. Though it does not contain any devotional or illuminated images with the color purple, there are numerous intricately pen-flourished initials throughout the beginning of the manuscript. According to Les Enlumiures, this book was the main textbook, alongside the Bible, of the fundamental textbook of the Theology Faculty of the medieval Universities from the twelfth century to the sixteenth century. The folio has been cut on the margin, but luckily, none of the penwork or text were damaged.
Fig. 2 is from f. 84v. The pen-flourished initial “U” has noticeably bright red and purple ink. Amazingly, the intricacy and color of the letters were not lost over time.
We cannot say for certain that the pigment used for the initials was produced by brazilwood, but it is the most likely candidate for the ink. In our example from the manuscript, depicted above in Figure 2, the initials are written on paper, not parchment.
Modern Constructions of a Not-So-Medieval Paint
Mexican cochineal was not introduced to England until the 16th century, meaning that it was not used as a medieval pigment. Because of this, we did not have any recipes from the Middle Ages to try out. There are, however, many modern recipes for producing a pigment out of the dried insect, and we were able to find one historical recipe from Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting dating back to the 16th century. So, using a modern recipe and the historical recipe, we reverse-engineered a recipe for the pigment.
Our process for making a lake pigment out of dried cochineal began with us grinding up a bunch of the insects in a mortar and pestle. Instead of a brass mortar and pestle, which is good for breaking down hard minerals, we opted for a ceramic one which is better for breaking down dried pigments. Once we ground the dried cochineal into a powder, the colorant, carminic acid, was released. This colorant is a deep red, so it was evident that it was released when the black and white speckled cochineal turned maroon once they were ground up into a fine powder. Then we added the crushed cochineal to a pot with water and boiled it. Once boiling, we added cream of tartar which, because it is acidic, would turn the pigment purple. At this point, we were left with a dye with a precipitate in it. We strained the dye with a cheesecloth which absorbed some of the dye; the precipitate was left on top of the cloth. We left the precipitate to dry on the cheesecloth. This precipitate, once dry, is the lake, and in order to use it as a pigment, we collected it by scraping it off and placing it in a jar. In modern recipes for the pigment, the lake was used like a watercolor by adding water to the pigment with a brush. Therefore, we did not use a binder when attempting to paint with the dried cochineal.
Results & Thoughts of a Future Attempt
Our initial results with our cochineal lake ended in tragedy. A day or two before we began painting, we were faced with spoiled paint whose horrendous odor filled the room. Due to the humidity inside the sealed jar, the lake did not fully dry out and molded. Considering it was made from an organic material that typically spoils quicker than inorganic ones, our sad fate was set in stone.
An upside is that the dye left over from that process was used to dye the shirt of a group member. Initially, the shirt took a more magenta color, but after a good wash, it faded to a pale rosy pink color, except in the armpits– which stained a dark magenta. Safe to say, we are now fully aware that this deodorant has aluminum. The aluminum typically found in deodorant acts like a mordant, making the dye darker and more durable.
A couple of weeks later, we ended up recreating our cochineal paint. We corrected our previous mistake and let it dry completely before enclosing it into the jar. We excitedly began to paint with pigment a few days after, but we were yet again met with failure. Our lake was a faint watercolor with pieces of the lake breaking off with each stroke, and if we are to be honest, it was more of colored water, not a watercolor. Luckily, we were able to get some color off of it before calling it quits. The color reacted to the paper, much like the brazilwood, appearing more red on application and then turning pink when it met the alkali in the paper.
Fig 3 – The cochineal pigment was very light on the paper and left multiple pieces from the original lake rather than a typical watercolor’s consistent color.
The failure is most likely due to a lack of a binder and possibly a lack of a preservative. A possible fix could be the substitution of alum in place of the cream of tartar. Cream of tartar is more commonly used as a mordant additive alongside alum, which could explain the lack of vibrancy on the paper. Maybe one day, we can make a decent paint out of cochineal.
Works Consulted
“Commentary on Peter Lombard’s First Book of the Sentences, Related to Paulus Venetus, Super Primum Sententiarum Johannis De Ripa Lecturae Abbreviatio.” Lombard Sentences Medieval Manuscript : Medieval Text Manuscripts, https://www.textmanuscripts.com/medieval/peter-lombard-sentences-60624.
Dekel, Suzanne. “4 Types of Aluminium Mordants & Recipes for Use.” SuzanneDekel, DekelDyes, 1 Oct. 2021, https://www.suzannedekel.com/post/all-about-alum-based-mordants.
Feller, Robert L., et al. Artists’ Pigments : a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics / Robert L. Feller, Editor. National Gallery of Art, 1986.
Maiwa. The Maiwa Guide to Natural Dyes, Natural Dyes – Mordants part 1, 13 Jan. 2013, https://maiwahandprints.blogspot.com/2013/01/natural-dyes-mordants-part-1.html.
Medlej, Joumana. Inks and Paints of the Middle East: A Handbook of Abbasid Art Technology. Majnouna, 2021. Accessed 26 November 2022.
Merrifield, Mary. Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting: Original Texts With English Translations. 1849. Dover Books.
Thompson, Daniel V. (Daniel Varney), and Bernard Berenson. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. Dover Publications, 1956.Van Houten Maldonado, Devon. “The Insect That Painted Europe Red.” BBC Culture, BBC, 2 Feb. 2018, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180202-the-insect-that-painted-europe-red.
Authors: Ansley Murdock, Hannah Rieder, Luna Jenkins, Zoe Alvarez
Let’s Jump into Lakes
When dipping our brushes into medieval pigments, we should familiarize ourselves with a common form of pigments, the lake. Lakes are an organic pigment made by the reaction of a soluble dye with a mordant, a necessary fixer for dye stuff to bind with paper according to Joumana Medlej’s book, Inks and Paints of the Middle East. There must be multiple iterations of separating the precipitate from dye and drying before storage. Dyes were not commonly used in manuscripts and would typically be reserved for working with fabric. Since these pigments are organic, there are some common quirks to note. They would be prone to fading and instability, the process of pigments degrading due to the presence of heat, sunlight, and pH. The chemical compositions of specific plants harvested would affect their resulting colors. Also, they were lightly pigmented, requiring limners (otherwise known as painters) to paint multiple layers to achieve the desired color on the folio. For more information on the difference between pigment types and their stability visit Artists’ Pigments : a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics. Our colors of purple and pink focused on three pigments that could be made this way: brazilwood, cochineal, and madder.
Before we dive deeper into our research on this style of pigment and “experiment” results let’s discuss which specific pigments we chose and why. We chose not to select madder root for its lack of use as a lake in the limit of our time period, and difficulty in recreating the recipe as it would require multiple days of work, as expanded by The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. We selected cochineal for creating an easy lake despite it not being used in this time period. Our first batch developed a pungent mold and the second failed to bind with the test paper. During the in-class creation of brazilwood ink, we opted to make a dye rather than a lake because the extra step of grinding the brazilwood chips would be too tedious.
Color Variance in Lakes
Madder, despite its likely limitation of time period, is a perfect example of the color variance found while producing lakes as it has both chemical differences by region and distinct reactions to separate mordants. The following information is synthesized from the madder report in Robert Feller’s Artists’ Pigments: a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics. Ratios of organic pigment producing compounds purpurin and alizarin determine the primary color of a madder pigment; purpurin rich creates a pink while alizarin rich tends toward a light violet. Most Western European pigments are a rose-red as the Southern European examples are higher in purpurin. Mordants would affect the lakes in the following ways: chalk and alum potash produce a deep red, iron sulfate produces a deep violet, and chromium alum creates a reddish brown. The exact color produced varies by the proportions of pigment determining chemicals in specific plants and quantities of the mordant used in preparation.
Brazilwood lakes can also take on an array of hues based on the chemical reactions that occur both when it is created and when it is applied to the source. If the brazilwood is mixed with an acid, like alum, it will turn red, and if the brazilwood is mixed with an alkali, like lye, it will turn a deep purple. Similarly, the vibrancy and hue of cochineal is affected by the addition of alkali and acidic mordants. Depending on the hue you wanted, cochineal could produce colors from deep crimson to purple. Figure 1, for example, shows how the pigments can change even upon immediate contact with their source. The higher bond artist paper must be more alkaline because the pigment turned purple upon application and after drying. On the cloth-style paper and untreated parchment, however, the pigment applied red, so it was evident that there must have been acids in the two sources that kept the pigment red. Despite the addition of mordants, it was very common for these organic pigments to fade over time when used as lakes due to their instability.
Lake Pigments in Medieval Manuscripts:
After looking at the borrowed manuscripts in the Special Collections Library, we were able to find the use of purple penwork in one specific manuscript: TM 339, the Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences. It is from Northern Italy in the fifteenth century (1479 to be precise), and it is a decorated manuscript on both parchment and paper. Though it does not contain any devotional or illuminated images with the color purple, there are numerous intricately pen-flourished initials throughout the beginning of the manuscript. According to Les Enlumiures, this book was the main textbook, alongside the Bible, of the fundamental textbook of the Theology Faculty of the medieval Universities from the twelfth century to the sixteenth century. The folio has been cut on the margin, but luckily, none of the penwork or text were damaged.
We cannot say for certain that the pigment used for the initials was produced by brazilwood, but it is the most likely candidate for the ink. In our example from the manuscript, depicted above in Figure 2, the initials are written on paper, not parchment.
Modern Constructions of a Not-So-Medieval Paint
Mexican cochineal was not introduced to England until the 16th century, meaning that it was not used as a medieval pigment. Because of this, we did not have any recipes from the Middle Ages to try out. There are, however, many modern recipes for producing a pigment out of the dried insect, and we were able to find one historical recipe from Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting dating back to the 16th century. So, using a modern recipe and the historical recipe, we reverse-engineered a recipe for the pigment.
Our process for making a lake pigment out of dried cochineal began with us grinding up a bunch of the insects in a mortar and pestle. Instead of a brass mortar and pestle, which is good for breaking down hard minerals, we opted for a ceramic one which is better for breaking down dried pigments. Once we ground the dried cochineal into a powder, the colorant, carminic acid, was released. This colorant is a deep red, so it was evident that it was released when the black and white speckled cochineal turned maroon once they were ground up into a fine powder. Then we added the crushed cochineal to a pot with water and boiled it. Once boiling, we added cream of tartar which, because it is acidic, would turn the pigment purple. At this point, we were left with a dye with a precipitate in it. We strained the dye with a cheesecloth which absorbed some of the dye; the precipitate was left on top of the cloth. We left the precipitate to dry on the cheesecloth. This precipitate, once dry, is the lake, and in order to use it as a pigment, we collected it by scraping it off and placing it in a jar. In modern recipes for the pigment, the lake was used like a watercolor by adding water to the pigment with a brush. Therefore, we did not use a binder when attempting to paint with the dried cochineal.
Results & Thoughts of a Future Attempt
Our initial results with our cochineal lake ended in tragedy. A day or two before we began painting, we were faced with spoiled paint whose horrendous odor filled the room. Due to the humidity inside the sealed jar, the lake did not fully dry out and molded. Considering it was made from an organic material that typically spoils quicker than inorganic ones, our sad fate was set in stone.
An upside is that the dye left over from that process was used to dye the shirt of a group member. Initially, the shirt took a more magenta color, but after a good wash, it faded to a pale rosy pink color, except in the armpits– which stained a dark magenta. Safe to say, we are now fully aware that this deodorant has aluminum. The aluminum typically found in deodorant acts like a mordant, making the dye darker and more durable.
A couple of weeks later, we ended up recreating our cochineal paint. We corrected our previous mistake and let it dry completely before enclosing it into the jar. We excitedly began to paint with pigment a few days after, but we were yet again met with failure. Our lake was a faint watercolor with pieces of the lake breaking off with each stroke, and if we are to be honest, it was more of colored water, not a watercolor. Luckily, we were able to get some color off of it before calling it quits. The color reacted to the paper, much like the brazilwood, appearing more red on application and then turning pink when it met the alkali in the paper.
The failure is most likely due to a lack of a binder and possibly a lack of a preservative. A possible fix could be the substitution of alum in place of the cream of tartar. Cream of tartar is more commonly used as a mordant additive alongside alum, which could explain the lack of vibrancy on the paper. Maybe one day, we can make a decent paint out of cochineal.
Works Consulted
“Commentary on Peter Lombard’s First Book of the Sentences, Related to Paulus Venetus, Super Primum Sententiarum Johannis De Ripa Lecturae Abbreviatio.” Lombard Sentences Medieval Manuscript : Medieval Text Manuscripts, https://www.textmanuscripts.com/medieval/peter-lombard-sentences-60624.
Corby, Candice, and William Pettit. “Cochineal Pigment.” The Bottega Projects, https://www.thebottegaprojects.com/materials-and-recipes/cochineal-pigment. Accessed 22 November 2022.
Dekel, Suzanne. “4 Types of Aluminium Mordants & Recipes for Use.” SuzanneDekel, DekelDyes, 1 Oct. 2021, https://www.suzannedekel.com/post/all-about-alum-based-mordants.
Feller, Robert L., et al. Artists’ Pigments : a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics / Robert L. Feller, Editor. National Gallery of Art, 1986.
“How to Mordant.” Botanical Colors, Botanical Colors, 15 Sept. 2022, https://botanicalcolors.com/how-to-mordant/.
Les Enluminures, https://www.lesenluminures.com/.
Maiwa. The Maiwa Guide to Natural Dyes, Natural Dyes – Mordants part 1, 13 Jan. 2013, https://maiwahandprints.blogspot.com/2013/01/natural-dyes-mordants-part-1.html.
Medlej, Joumana. Inks and Paints of the Middle East: A Handbook of Abbasid Art Technology. Majnouna, 2021. Accessed 26 November 2022.
Merrifield, Mary. Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting: Original Texts With English Translations. 1849. Dover Books.
Thompson, Daniel V. (Daniel Varney), and Bernard Berenson. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. Dover Publications, 1956.Van Houten Maldonado, Devon. “The Insect That Painted Europe Red.” BBC Culture, BBC, 2 Feb. 2018, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180202-the-insect-that-painted-europe-red.
Authors: Ansley Murdock, Hannah Rieder, Luna Jenkins, Zoe Alvarez
Categories:MITC Student posts Uncategorized Undergraduate