The painted Buddha statues excavated from Longxing Temple in Qingzhou, Shandong province are highly valued for its scientific, artistic and conventional religious information. In history, some precious statues were probably repainted, some were damaged in the special period of time. It is very interesting that the painting on the head of a Buddha statue (Northern Qi Dynasty) is in different colors, including black, green and blue. Why the head of the Buddha statue was painted in different colors? Is it caused by repainting or color changing during the long time of history? In order to answer these questions, techniques of three-dimensional video microscopy, polarized light microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectrometer instrument were employed to analyze the painting samples from the head of the Buddha statue. The result shows that the statue was repainted at least once. The blue color consists lapis lazuli {(Na,Ca)₇-₈(Al,Si)₁₂(O,S)₂₄[SO₄, Cl₂(OH)₂]} and azurite[2CuCO₃·Cu(OH)₂], the green pigment is malachite [CuCO₃·Cu(OH)₂], while the black pigment is Chinese ink.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Li et al. (2017) studied this question.