*3.6. Pink/Purple/Violet Colourants*

Hues ranging from pink to violet are used extensively throughout the miniatures. They were employed for painting the garments worn by anonymous shepherds as well as the rich mantles of God the Father and Christ. The observation under high magnification of areas painted in pink allowed the use of a mixture of blue and red pigments to be excluded as a potential explanation for obtaining this hue (Figure 6a). Instead, the presence of a pink colourant was also observed. Sporadically, the presence of blue and/or white particles was also evident, thus indicating the use of a blue pigment to tune the final hue towards violet and of a white pigment to brighten the colour.

**Figure 6.** (**a**) Image under 80× magnification of a pink area. (**b**) FORS spectrum in Log(1/R) coordinates of a pink area (pink line, namely the coat of the Angel on the right side at f. 1r, Figure 1a) and of a violet area (violet line, the sky on top at f. 42r, Figure 1g).

The numerous FORS spectra collected from the pink areas showed rather homogeneous spectral features. In particular, they were characterised by an inflexion point in the range 595–600 nm, an absorption band centred at 555 nm and a reflection maximum in the

range 475–500 nm (Figure 6b; spectra are shown in Log(1/R) coordinates to better appreciate the absorption features). These features, when compared with the spectra obtained from our reference palette and according to the indications given by Melo et al. [25] and by Roger et al. [27], point to the presence of brasilwood lake, a colourant obtained by adsorbing dyes extracted from the wood of various species of *Caesalpinia* trees on alum, chalk, lead white or gypsum. The identification was confirmed by the FOMF analysis that yielded emission bands at 604 and 625 (data not reported). Brasilwood was in use throughout the Middle Ages. It was mentioned by Cennini [4] with regards to improving the colour of ultramarine blue. It was also used by 15th century Parisian miniature painters [27] who preferred it to insect dyes and madder. In the present case, brasilwood was also used on a layer of azurite to obtain a violet-purple tone, such as in the wall behind the angel at f. 1r (Figure 1a) or in the wall and in the background at f. 42r (Figure 1g), or to highlight red areas, such as in the orange at f. 24r (Figure 1c).

XRF detected intense signals from lead in purple areas. This could be related both to the presence of lead white used to brighten the colour and to its use as the inorganic substrate for the organic dye to prepare the lake pigment. Weak signals of copper (and of barium), detected in a few of the analysed spots imply that the blue grains that were sporadically observed under 80× magnification are those of azurite, which is coherent with their absorption features detected at 571 and 640 nm in the violet spectrum shown in Figure 6b. However, it was not possible to obtain micro-Raman signals from the purple pigment due to the strong fluorescence that obscured the weak Raman signals (if any).
