The Lapis Lazuli Portrait Scaricare Film
Elliott Davis
The Ishtar Gate (today in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin) was the most elaborate of the inner city gates constructed in Babylon in antiquity. The whole gate was covered in lapis lazuli glazed bricks which would have rendered the façade with a jewel-like shine. Alternating rows of lion and cattle march in a relief procession across the gleaming blue surface of the gate.
Ur was one of the world's first true cities, at the heart of Ancient Sumer. It was inhabited for five thousand years, from the late Ubaid period (5500 BCE) to the time of the Achaemenid Persian kings (300 BCE). Ur featured prominently in political, religious, and economic activity on the Mesopotamian floodplain. Southern Mesopotamia has long been recognized as the "cradle of civilization." The traditional site of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10-15) and homeland of the world's earliest civilization, the southern floodplain lies between the Arabian Desert plateau on the south and the Zagros mountains on the east. Ur's location on the banks of the powerful Euphrates River provided water and linked it to Mesopotamia's global economy: goods found in burials at Ur, lapis lazuli, carnelian, agate, gold, silver, and copper were all imported into a region with few natural resources.
Blue traces the color through time and around the world: from Afghanistan's lapis lazuli, made into jewelry, ground to create eye shadow and paint, to the indigo plant grown on plantations in India and Bangladesh, soaked in water and used to dye fabric. In Italy, Brew-Hammond writes "from the 13th century onward, some artists began reserving blue to paint the robes of Mary, the mother of Jesus."
Minter would have loved to use some of the materials referenced in the book, like lapis lazuli, but didn't think they would photograph as well, so settled on acrylic paint for the illustrations. He says it's impossible to count the number of blues in this book.
The mosaic portraits of Mawlana Hazar Imam and Mawlana Sultan Muhammad Shah are made from lapis-lazuli (or lapis), a semi precious stone which has been mined in the Badakhshan province for thousands of years. The finest lapis has an intense blue colour, and is found in the Kokcha river valley of Badakhshan.
A combined chemical and visual characterization of the pigments was performed by MA-XRF, which resulted in the elemental distribution map of the painting. The main elements identified in each pigment can be used to map the white (Pb), the red (Hg), and the brown (Fe) color, as showed in Figure 6. However, due to the instrumental set-up, light elements as Na, Al, Si, and S that are present in the lapis lazuli could not be detected and, thus, this pigment was not mapped. In addition to the signals of the main pigments components, it is interesting to look at the Cu signal coming from the metal support, that can provide insights about both the thickness and the characteristics of the superposing pigments. In fact, the decrease of Cu signal corresponds to those areas where Pb is present and the higher is the Pb signal the lower is the Cu one. This is explained by the fact that Pb has shielding properties toward X-rays and therefore, the higher are its concentration and thickness the higher will be its shielding effect. In general terms, the use of this technique is comparable to EDS, giving the same analytical results, made exception for the lighter elements detection. However, EDS analyses cannot be performed on large objects, due to the limited analytical chamber dimensions. Furthermore, most of the time it is mandatory to perform in-situ measurements, making XRF the best techniques for such situations. Moreover, this technique combines the advantages of a single spot chemical analyses, as EDS or classic XRF, with the more straightforward visual interpretation given by imaging techniques as UV, IR, and IRFC. If needed, the use of this technique would allow to detect hidden paintings below the outermost surface, due to the difference in composition between pigments used in different time of history (Saverwyns et al., 2018). Therefore, even if time consuming, the application of MA-XRF for the study of this kind of artifact allows to have many information by a non-invasive approach and to have an easier discussion of the results between scientist and conservators or art-historians.
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