Gems on Canvas: Pigments Historically Sourced from Gem Materials

Abstract

GEMS & GEMOLOGY FALL 2022 The wearing and collecting of gems mark their bearers with powerful symbols of status and allure. Because of their high value, gems are researched with nondestructive methods to feed growing public interest in areas such as geographic origin, synthesis, and treatment. For a gemologist, causing damage to a stone is a cardinal sin. For a painter in the past, gem materials were coveted for their pigment potential. For centuries, perfectly viable gemstones met their fate between a mortar and pestle before becoming immortalized as paint on a canvas, mural, or cave wall. These pigments commemorated color as a means of communication beyond the limits of written or spoken language. Gem materials such as hematite, azurite, malachite, lapis lazuli, bone, ivory, and cinnabar have all played roles as pigments throughout history—for some, a role assumed long before their use as gem materials (figure 1). Pigment research is an important field encompassing geologists, artists, anthropologists, historians, and even gemologists who contribute their knowledge and expertise to a subject where these disciplines converge. Pigment can be defined as the component of paint that contributes color (Siddall, 2018). Natural inorganic pigments are derived from rocks or minerals that have been processed to extract and concentrate the material’s coloring agent (figure 2). Synthetic pigments are often chemically identical to their natural coun-