Illuminated manuscripts are the best material that we have for this purpose for two reasons. This inquiry has been made into the period from the seventh to the beginning of the sixteenth century. I propose in this paper to begin by bringing together and tabulating the information at present available on the subject, and then to go on to describe the results of my examination of a large number of illuminated manuscripts at the British Museum, the Advocates Library, Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh University Library. By the careful preparation of old pigments, and their comparison with those on dated documents under the microscope, using both ordinary and polarized light, and by the devising of microscopic chemical tests, I have endeavoured to decide on the nature of the pigment without injury to the manuscript or picture.
I have therefore found it necessary to devise new methods of identification. He is thus debarred from obtaining the definite information he requires if he is to make progress in this direction. The inquiry, however, presents certain obvious difficulties, as it is seldom that the chemist is allowed sufficient freedom with an ancient picture or illuminated manuscript to enable him to apply ordinary methods of analysis. Moreover, such an inquiry might result in the associating of certain pigments with certain places and schools of painting, and even with individual painters. Such information, if sufficiently complete, would be of great assistance in dating unquestionably many objects of art, and would in many cases be invaluable in detecting forgeries. It is, in the first place, a matter of considerable interest to know what pigments were in actual use at various periods in the history of Art, and how far in practice the old receipts represented the artists palette. Although a great deal of information on the subject has been collected from the examination of old records, and, in addition, by the occasional analysis of the actual pigments used, the whole subject seems to me to be deserving of a more exact inquiry than it has as yet received. DURING the history of Art, from the earliest times to the present day, certain pigments have remained common to the artists palette, and while some have dropped out of use, others have been added.
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