Spectroscopic Analyses of Blue Pigments in the Manoscritto Parmense 3285 from the 14th Century

Abstract

During the restoration and digitalization intervention of the Manoscritto Parmense (Ms. Parm.) 3285 codex, a 14th-century illuminated volume that contains the three books of Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia belonging to the Biblioteca Palatina of Parma, the deposits present in the center of some bifoliums were removed using soft bristle brushes and collected. A preliminary observation of these deposits with a stereomicroscope allowed the detection of some pigment grains of different colors, likely detached from the full-page illuminations at the beginning of each book. These grains of the pigments were then analyzed in the Bologna ENEA Research Centre through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), EDX microanalysis, and micro-Raman spectroscopy, allowing the identification of the minerals or the compounds used as pigments. Consequently, some pigments that were commonly used in the Middle Ages such as gold leaf, typically employed in illuminations and the decoration of heading initials, cinnabar red, and different types of blue pigments, including traces of lapis lazuli and azurite, were identified.