Materials and Techniques of the Mural Paintings in the Church-Ossuary of the Rila Monastery, Bulgaria

A groundbreaking analysis reveals that the 1795 mural paintings in Rila Monastery's Church-Ossuary, created by Athonite painters, employed a traditional yet innovative palette of pigments and binders. The study identified natural pigments like yellow ochre, red ochre, green earth, and calcite alongside synthetic ones such as smalt, red lead, cinnabar, and verdigris using advanced techniques including ATR-FTIR, SEM-EDS, and ELISA. Notably, blue backgrounds were painted with a smalt-based mixture bound by carbohydrates, diverging from the post-Byzantine egg tempera technique used elsewhere in the murals. This analysis suggests that the Athonite artists' methods became a benchmark for Bulgarian icon-painters, offering new insights into historical artistic practices and material science.

Stamboliyska, B., Tapanov, S., Velcheva, E., Atanasova-Vladimirova, S., Ranguelov, B., Guncheva, M., Stoyanov, S., & Yancheva, D. (2024). Materials and Techniques of the Mural Paintings in the Church-Ossuary of the Rila Monastery, Bulgaria. Minerals, 14(11), 1115. https://doi.org/10.3390/min14111115