Pigments and gold in Persian painting

Pigments in Persian painting were mostly mineral: the mineral was ground to a soft powder on a hard stone, sifted, washed and mixed with egg-white, glue or gum arabic, as Norah Titley describes. ¹ Early on albumen was used because it made paints resistant to water and damp, thinned with vitriol or alum, which gave early miniatures their enamel-like surface; but albumen paints did not keep, and glue replaced it, causing colours such as crimson to stick to the facing page. ¹

Copper green — verdigris, made by treating copper with vinegar — is for Titley "a conservationist's nightmare": the paper becomes brittle and drops out leaving a hole, and the pigment eats through and stains neighbouring pages brown. ¹ Blue, a glory of Islamic illumination and Persian painting, came from lapis lazuli, lightened with ceruse white; vermilion came from cinnabar and yellow from antimony, she notes. ¹

Gold leaf was made by placing pieces of gold between layers of deerskin, sometimes two hundred or more, and pounding them thin; the leaf was rubbed or pounded with glue into a paste, put in water, the sediment mixed with glue and saffron, brushed on and burnished with agate; silver was added for a greenish gold. ² The cost of pigments and gold was one reason only the greatest rulers could maintain academies. ² Silver, used in Persian painting for armour, weapons and water, almost always blackened by oxidation — hence the many black pools and streams in Persian miniatures. ²