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Noghani S, Jafari R, Modarresi P. Application of Colorimetry for Compartive Study of Minium Pigment in Five Safavid Illustrated Manuscript Belonging to the National Museum of Iran. KCR 2024; 6 (4) :36-53
URL: http://journal.richt.ir/kcr/article-1-98-en.html

Red mineral pigments, including minium, vermilion and ocher, have historically been some of the most important and widely used colors ranges in painting, gilding, tabulation and marking verses. This color spectrum in the artworks from previous centuries has shown acceptable stability, with its brightness well-preserved. The preparation of color, as one of the most a significant tools for artists, has long been an important issue, leading to the documentation of  color preparation methods in book design in book design treatises. Minium processing is mentioned as a red pigments in three treatises: Umdeh al-Kottab, Bayan al-Sana, at and Qanun al-Sovar. In the current research the text of these treatises were reviewed, and a comparative study of minium identified in a number of illustrated manuscripts from the Safavid period was carried out using colorimetric method. Initially for this purpose, in the first step, minium was mixed with specific ratios of vermilion to prepare red color tables based on minium. Eight samples of selected miniatures from Safavid period illustrated manuscripts (including 5 illustrated manuscripts from the National Museum of Iran) and 17 prepared color samples were subjected to spectral and color analysis using a spectrophotometer. The color difference values of the prepared samples and the historical samples were then calculated. The results indicate that there is an acceptable color difference between the prepared colors and the historical samples. Therefore, this method can be used in the reconstruction and homogenization of the red spectrum resulting from the minium pigment.