The study deals with the characterization of pigments from the newly discovered wall painting at the Dominican Monastery in Ptuj (Slovenia) in order to acquire detailed information about the technology used, as well as to identify the deterioration products. The uncovered wall painting, depicting a vivid procession of riders, is dated to the late 14th century. Painting techniques and pigments were analysed by optical microscopy and Raman microspectroscopy. The optical microscope revealed that the wall painting was executed in a lime technique characteristic of the Central‐European artistic expression. Several natural and synthetic inorganic pigments, such as azurite, red and yellow ochres, cinnabar, red lead, lead white, lime white, lead–tin yellow type I and carbon black were identified. Surprising identification of the type I of lead–tin yellow used already in the 14th century is of high importance, since, until now, it was considered that it appeared on the market only in the first half of the 15th century. Plattnerite was observed as a result of degradation of lead pigments. The use of expensive azurite and cinnabar could indicate a wealthy client. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study concerns the microfacies characterization of white and black limestone tesserae from selected Roman floor mosaics in Slovenia, with the aim of defining their provenance. We investigated 42 tesserae from 15 different mosaics from the archaeological sites of Ljubljana, Izola, Mošnje, Ptuj, Črnomelj and Šentpavel, dated from the first century BC to the fifth century AD. Among the studied tesserae, 13 different microfacies were identified: eight black and five white. The most common were mudstones with ostracods (65% of black tesserae) and wacke-packstones with miliolids (85% of white tesserae). The majority of the identified facies can be found in the Cretaceous successions of the Dinaric Carbonate Platform in southwestern Slovenia, north-eastern Italy and south-eastern Croatia, suggesting a regional or imported origin of the tesserae.