A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c14.s2.33

c14.s2.33

The nature of fresco-painting in any of its forms implies the use of a limited range of pigments capable of resisting the decomposing action of lime, and consequently composed of natural earths. At Ajaṇṭā and Bāgh the colours most freely used are white, red, and brown in various shades, a dull green, and blue. The white is opaque, mainly composed of sulphate of lime; the reds and browns derive their tints solely from compounds of iron; the green is a silicate, similar to the mineral now known as *terre verte*; and the blue is ultramarine, which was obtained in ancient times by grinding calcined lapis-lazuli, a costly semi-precious mineral usually imported from either Persia or Badakshān. The long panels of the ceilings in Cave II, dating from about a. d. 600, offer well-preserved examples of charming floral decorations in blue (Griffiths, Pl. 123-5). In the early paintings of the Rāmgarh Hill, Orissa (*ante*, p. 273), and the fifth-century works at Sīgiriya in Ceylon (*post*, Sec. 5 of this chapter), blue never occurs. At Ajaṇṭā, yellow, so largely used at Anurādhapura in Ceylon, apparently is very rare. The yellow of ancient painters is believed to have been always orpiment, a natural arsenic sulphide.