Identification of dyes in Persian manuscripts

Persian manuscripts are among the most beautiful artistic productions in the field of miniature painting. Knowledge of the colorants used by Persian artists, however, is not as thorough as the knowledge of pictorial materials used in Western manuscripts. It is only recently that advanced instrumental analytical techniques have been applied to the investigation of colorants in Persian miniatures. Nevertheless, very little diagnostic information is available on the use of organic colorants, so our understanding of this aspect relies mostly on bibliographic sources. This paper provides an overview of the scarce literature on scientific analyses of organic colorants in Persian manuscripts and offers further examples of their use by reporting the results of non-invasive analyses performed on some books held in northern Italian libraries and museums. The occurrence of two types of coccid dyes (but no evidence for the use of madder), Indian yellow, safflower red, a tannin-like dye and indigo was ascertained by in situ application of portable techniques such as UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry and spectrofluorimetry.