Analysis of Pigments of Colored Paintings From Early Qing-Dynasty Fengxian Dian in the Forbidden City

Fengxian Dian is an ancestral worship hallinside the Forbidden City where the emperor's family of the Ming and Qing Dynasties offered sacrifices to their ancestors, ranking second only to the Imperial Ancestral Temple (Tai Miao). Fengxian Dian was built in the Ming Dynasty and destroyed at the end of the Ming Dynasty. It was reconstructed during the reign of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty, and the existing buildings were mainly built in the Kangxi period, which is recorded in the archives. Fengxian Dian preserves a few extant colored paintings of the early Qingdynasty, which is the precious material to study the decorative paintings art in this period. The pigment samples from the Fengxian Dian were analyzed and identified for the first time using microscopic observation, laser Raman spectroscopy and SEM-EDS. The results show that there is a stratification phenomenon in some red and blue color layers. What's more, the color of the surface layer is brighter, while the color of the middle layer and the lower layer is light, and the pigment formula used in each layer is different. The red pigments are vermilion(HgS), red lead (Pb3O4) and red ochre (Fe2O3) , green pigment is atacamite [CuCl2 center dot 3Cu(OH)(2)], blue pigment is azurite [2CuCO(3) center dot Cu (OH)(2)], white pigments are lead white [2PbCO(3) center dot Pb(OH)(2)]. Light color pigment is mineral pigments mixed with white pigment dominated by lead white. Among them, the light red color pigment is composed of red lead and lead white, and the light green color pigment is made of atacamite and lead white. However, no lead white is found in light blue, and kaolin [Al2Si2O5 (OH)(4)] is speculated because of many Al and Si elements present. The light blue color pigment is probably composed of azurite and kaolin. The absence of synthetic pigments such as ultramarine and emerald green, which were commonly used in the late Qing dynasty, confirms no major reparation of the polychrome paintings in Fengxian Dian after the Kangxi period. It is rare to use kaolin as the white pigment to confect light pigments. The discovery of kaolin in colored paintings of Fengxian Dian has enriched the materials of pigment production of the early Qing Dynasty, which have certain academic significance.