The Breslau Psalter

Yellow pigments

Artists' Materials

Yellow pigments were not part of the shared palette, and were scarcely used throughout the manuscript. The Gaibana Master and his Associate did not use yellow at all. Hands B and C used realgar, while Hand D chose a yellow earth pigment. The remaining artists probably used an organic dye to paint small pale yellow details.

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Detail of the kneeling king’s face and halo under magnification (7.5x). His flesh tone is built upon a light blue layer painted with woad, while his hair and beard contain ultramarine blue. The gold leaf of the halo, laid over a ground layer containing verdigris, has suffered significant losses due to the degradation and loss of adhesion of the green pigment.

The monumental figures and elaborately tooled gold halos are characteristic of Hand A’s work. The composition betrays his collaboration with – or knowledge of works by – the Master of Giovanni da Gaibana, as it is closely related to the Gaibana Master’s painting of the same subject in the Paduan Epistolary.