[split] VM color palette

[arca_libraria]

@ReneZ thank you - I hadn't actually seen the paper in full before, I went looking for it years ago and I think the only thing I found back then was a screenshot of the conclusions. I've only skimmed the paper quickly but my initial impressions are that there is nothing earth-shatteringly strange in the paper's findings. The trace elements are interesting, but because they're only traces, it is hard to draw any conclusions.

The stuff in the McCrone report about the green are the most interesting to me because I had forgotten that copper resinate rises in popularity in the 15th century. The copper resinate would have been a relatively "new" pigment when the VMS was being made, but it became popular very quickly because it improves the usability and stability of verdigris/copper acetate derived greens with not too much additional effort or cost. My subjective observation is that copper resinate generally appears brighter and richer than the way it does in the VMS, which again suggests either lower quality pigments or that the person responsible for transforming the pigments into paints was not an expert.

I avoided discussing the yellow because it's so pale and translucent that it could easily be an organic or just a heavily diluted mineral pigment. I haven't read the Clarke chapter before so I'll add it to my reading list - thank you.

@Koen it's a good question, but it's hard to answer. I think the main reason for the variable but sometimes poor paint job in the VMS is more to do with the person(s) doing the painting than anything else. I think that the art in the VMS is detailed and careful and deliberate, but it is very poorly executed with wobbly lines, poor expression of form, and inconsistent paint application. I've written out a few things below that I've been thinking about in relation to the paint in the VMS. I have included some questions alongside my thoughts, even though some of the questions are impossible to answer.

• If we exclude the writing ink, then in all cases where the pigment has been identified, the artist has used one of the cheaper pigment options for each of the colours in the VMS. A lot can go wrong when making pigments so it is possible that lower-quality batches of pigment were sold at cheaper prices, or that the lower quality batches were kept for use in less "important" or "popular" projects.
  
• Did the VMS team buy pre-made wet paints (i.e. the pigment mixed with some sort of binder), or did they buy the dry pigments and transform them into paint themselves? Did they buy the raw ingredients and make their own pigments? The answers partly depend on the individual pigments because some pigments have to be transformed into wet paints just before you use them, but others will remain stable and useful for a while after a binding medium has been added. The paints in the VMS are a bit dull and are quite grainy on some pages which suggests that the quality of the ingredients and/or the skill of the person making them were not the best. However, the paints aren't terrible and they have survived without flaking off, turning black, or disappearing entirely, which should count in their favour. If we assume that the VMS was intended for a very small audience (and this is just a hypothesis for this question - the VMS audience is another problem entirely) then having high quality illustrations in terms of both art and pigment may not have been important or useful.
  
• Does the paint application tell us anything about sources that may have inspired the VMS? This is basically impossible to answer, but you will have all seen the translucent-tint-and-wash style of illustration that was popular at various times in the middle ages (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). The VMS artist(s) sometimes seems to want fully opaque paint application, but some illustrations in the manuscript are filled in with very blobby translucent washes of colour, so was the artist trying to emulate a particular style, or simply trying to make the paint last longer, or doing it for another reason entirely?