lazurite

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

Lazurite was readily available to Persian painters from the mines of Badakhshan in modern northern Afghanistan (p. 24). It is the blue crystalline component of the mineral lapis lazuli, a sulphur-containing sodium aluminium silicate mineral where the blue colour is due to entrapped sulphur radical anions (p. 24).

Evidence

"Raman analysis of the blue colour in several areas of the double-page frontispiece always gives a spectrum attributable to lazurite, with strong bands at 548 and 1096 cm−1"

Remarks

Lazurite was identified on all four manuscripts analysed as the primary blue pigment (p. 24). The paper distinguishes it from synthetic ultramarine blue (first made in 1828) based on the presence of mineral impurities like pyrite and calcite in natural lazurite, though these are absent in the synthetic version (p. 24).