Colouring Agents in the Pottery Glazes of Western Anatolia: New Evidence for the Use of Naples Yellow Pigment Variations During The Late Byzantine Period

Abstract

A group of the late 12th–13th century Byzantine pottery glazes, mostly related to Zeuxippus Ware Type pottery from the Kuşadası Kadıkalesi/Anaia site in western Anatolia, was characterized non‐destructively using Raman spectrometry. SEM–EDX was also used complementarily for the glaze characterization. The nature and composition of the glazes, firing conditions, aspects of colour formation and pigments used were discussed. The glazes were found to be lead‐rich silicates, fired close to 700°C on the basis of the Si–O stretching peak maxima of the Raman spectra recorded at ∼920–980 cm–1, as also confirmed by SEM–EDX analysis. The polymerization index values calculated are between approximately 0.05 and 0.1. The use of biscuit‐fired bodies prior to glaze application was suggested based on the results of SEM–EDX analysis. In particular, the detection of Naples yellow pigment variations on a locally produced pottery sample is quite significant, since the use of this type of pigment has hardly ever been reported between the Roman period and the Renaissance.

Non‐invasive on‐site Raman study of polychrome and white enamelled glass artefacts in imitation of porcelain assigned to Bernard Perrot and his followers

“…There can only be two thermally stable blue chromophores present in glassy silicates: (a) Co 2+ ions dissolved in the silicate network or hosted in a pigment as a crystalline phase stable in the (molten) glass, namely phase‐hosting cobalt ions (cobalt silicate, cobalt aluminate, and spinels) and (b) a phase‐hosting S 3 − chromophore such as lazurite (a feldspar‐like mineral present in lapis lazuli rocks) or ultramarine (a synthetic zeolite) . Co 2+ ions dissolved in the glassy silicate matrix do not show a specific Raman signature, in contrast to the pigments that have very characteristic Raman signatures . In particular, the use of European arsenic‐rich cobalt ores leads to the precipitation of a lead arsenate apatite phase that is characterised with a strong ~820‐cm −1 band, in the case of lead‐containing glasses/glazes coloured with this type of cobalt source .…”

“…These compounds, more commonly defined as Naples Yellow‐type pigments had been used to obtain the yellow colour in ceramic glazes and glasses throughout history since the prehistoric times. This type of pigment is a traditional colourant of Byzantine pottery and then of Islamic faience and Mediterranean majolica . This type of pigment with the pyrochlore structure in the form of Pb 2 [Sb/Sn/Fe/Zn/Si] 2 O 7–δ solid solution is very variable, and the exact composition of the pigment affects the peak wavenumbers as well as the relative Raman intensity of its components .…”

On-site Raman analysis of 17th and 18th century Limoges enamels: Implications on the European cobalt sources and the technological relationship between Limoges and Chinese enamels

“…Regarding the colour yellow, lead-based pyrochlore pigment [9,23,25,29,30] had already been used in the form of antimonate in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and is usually known as Naples yellow, a very common yellow pigment after the 16 th century [29].…”

“…[30][31][32][33][34][35]. The compositional analyses of Famille Rose, Famille Verte and cloisonné wares as well as cloisonné enamels on metal have been reported by a few authors [21,24,25,[35][36][37][38], but as noted by Kingery and Vandiver in 1986, "the descriptions of the enamel technology are completely speculative" [24] due to the very small number of artefacts studied.…”

Early Renaissance Production Recipes for Naples Yellow Pigment: A Mineralogical and Lead Isotope Study of Italian Majolica from Montelupo (Florence)

“…Possibly due to the downfall of the Western Roman Empire (ad 476) and the change of commercial routes, the recipe for the production of this pigment in the Western World has been lost (Dik et al 2005;Seccaroni 2006). In fact, during the Middle Ages, yellow glazes and glasses were apparently obtained through recycling of Roman glasses, while Pb-Sb compounds continued to be produced and employed only in the Islamic (Seccaroni 2006) and Byzantine worlds, as recently observed in late Byzantine glazed pottery from Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Tanevska et al 2009;Kirmizi et al 2014).…”