Resumen de An elusive colorant: availability, preparation and use of anthocyanin colorants in European medieval illuminators' workshop
Anthocyanins are colorants that provide most of the blue, red and violet colours in numerous plants and fruits. Because of their great sensitivity to the slightest changes in pH and their instability in ordinary daylight, it is generally thought that these colorants were used only to dye everyday clothes in a domestic context. However, medieval artists' recipe books not only describe these elusive substances, but also indicate their use in illumination. This is notably the case for the texts of the so-called 'Strasbourg Tradition', written in the south of Germany and the north of France between 1400 and 1560, and partly composed from an older Alsatian treatise on illumination. Departing from these sources, this paper details the methods employed to prepare these colorants and (re)evaluates their diverse uses in painting and illuminating techniques. These technical data subsequently served as a basis upon which to make reconstructions. Finally, an attempt to correlate the information provided by these recipe books with specific artistic practices was carried out collating the descriptions with the results of analyses from contemporary illuminations by an Alsatian workshop active in the same geographical area.
