Macroscopic XRF imaging in unravelling polychromy on Mycenaean wall-paintings from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos

Kokiasmenou, Eleni; Caliri, Claudia; Kantarelou, V.; Karydas, A. G.; Romano, Francesco; Brecoulaki, Hariclia

doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.102079

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The goal of this section is twofold: (i) To summarize the scientific identifications of shellfish purple pigments applied as paints on wall paintings and some other objects and (ii) to briefly discuss the analytical techniques used for identification purposes. Both, previously reported identifications and analytical techniques are summarized in Table 1 [37][38][39][40][41][42][43]46,[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74]. The latter shows that shellfish purple was used in different objects for painting purposes, uninterrupted by all major pre-Roman civilizations of the Aegean, starting with the Minoan period of the Late Bronze Age up to the Hellenistic period.…”

Section: Paints Pigments and Identification Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review on the Archaeological Chemistry of Shellfish Purple

Karapanagiotis

2019

Sustainability

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Shellfish purple, also known as Tyrian purple and royal purple, has a long history, which has been revealed and documented in recent years through valid physicochemical studies using sophisticated techniques. The aim of the work was to summarize the conclusions of these studies and to describe the results of two unpublished investigations regarding the (i) identification of shellfish purple in a textile (4th century BCE) from ancient Macedonia and (ii) dramatic effect of the dyeing conditions on the composition of the purple dye. Moreover, a critical discussion is included about the discovery of the shellfish pigment and dye based on the available scientific evidence. Previously published reports describing the identification of the shellfish colorant in objects of the cultural heritage were carefully summarized. Shellfish purple was not used only as colorant, but it served other purposes as emphasized in this review. In particular, examples for the use of shellfish purple in medicine, grave goods and fillers and plasters in walls, were described. Examples of materials and methods that were used in the past to produce “fake” purple, imitating the aesthetic result of the valuable royal marine material were summarized. Finally, the solubility of indigoids was discussed using modern approaches of physical chemistry.

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Section: Paints Pigments and Identification Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review on the Archaeological Chemistry of Shellfish Purple

Karapanagiotis

2019

Sustainability

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“…One remarkable example is the purple applied on the crocus petals of the Saffron Gatherers depiction at Akrotiri, on the island of Thera, nowadays Santorini (Sotiropoulou 2004). Another example is the particular hue obtained by mixing Tyrian purple with Egyptian blue to depict the sea in the Naval Scene painting at the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, a Mycenaean site, datable to 1200 BC (Kokiasmenou et al 2020). Later on, the current archaeological records indicate the predominant use in the eastern Mediterranean basin up to first century BC, with a single evidence reported for the entire Middle Ages, referring to the twelfth century paintings in the Church of Sainte Madeleine at Manas, Department of Drôme, south-eastern France (March et al 2011), interestingly a church linked with the Knights Templar.…”

Section: Purplementioning

confidence: 99%

Pigments—the palette of organic colourants in wall paintings

Aceto

2021

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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The present contribution deals with the use of organic colourants in wall paintings, polychrome pottery and painted stone artworks, i.e. painted artworks on inorganic supports. The term organic colourants is referred to the chemical nature of these compounds but not to the way of application; therefore, organic colourants can be dyes, lakes or pigments. The use of organic colourants in wall paintings has been given little attention in the past, perhaps on the assumption that they were rarely used by ancient artists. Recent diagnostic studies, however, brought evidence that their use was not fragmentary; on the contrary, there seems to be continuity in the centuries, at least with regard to the most widely used such as madder, Tyrian purple and indigo. Sources, alteration phenomena, identification methods and analytical evidence is given for the main organic colourants with concern to red, yellow, green, purple and blue hues. Drawbacks and issues are discussed with concern to the identification techniques.

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“…EDXRF has numerous applications in this field, as it is able to detect elements from sodium to uranium, and in certain cases can go down to carbon [1], moreover the data treatment (e.g., qualitative analysis, PCA [2,3], semiquantitative analysis [4][5][6], quantitative analysis) makes this technique suitable to answer numerous questions. Thus, EDXRF is commonly used to perform provenance studies on ceramics, coins and glass [3,[7][8][9], to evaluate corrosion processes on metals [10,11], find restorations in paintings [12][13][14] or fake objects [15], or to identify worn out pigmentation in ancient polychromies [16][17][18][19]. These are just few examples of potential applications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FUXYA2020: A Low-Cost Homemade Portable EDXRF Spectrometer for Cultural Heritage Applications

et al. 2022

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The project FUXYA2020 was intended to design and prototype a low-cost basic energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer for all those cases where there is not enough financial support to buy a commercial device. Indeed, home-made instruments are ideal when funds are low but constant over the years, as this approach allows the costs to be spread over a longer period of time. The FUXYA2020 was intended mostly for cultural heritage (CH) applications: we optimized the geometry to meet the requirements for both low Z matrix objects, such as glasses and ceramics, and medium-high Z materials, such as metals; besides, we designed a positioning system through Arduino components to obtain good results and repeatability for samples with a complex geometry. The FUXYA2020’s performance was tested both for qualitative and quantitative analyses, the former on pigment layers, and the latter on gold-based certified alloys, exploiting Axil-QXAS software for data elaboration. The classification of ancient ceramics based on multivariate analysis obtained through R environment was also carried out. The qualitative data on pigments have also been compared with the same data obtained by a commercial XRF spectrometer, demonstrating how our very simple and inexpensive prototype can be of great help for a rapid and reliable characterization of cultural heritage materials whenever commercial devices are unaffordable.

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Macroscopic XRF imaging in unravelling polychromy on Mycenaean wall-paintings from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos

Cited by 8 publications

References 22 publications

A Review on the Archaeological Chemistry of Shellfish Purple

A Review on the Archaeological Chemistry of Shellfish Purple

Pigments—the palette of organic colourants in wall paintings

FUXYA2020: A Low-Cost Homemade Portable EDXRF Spectrometer for Cultural Heritage Applications

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