The Analysis Of The Pigment Of Colored Drawings In Dazu Baoding Mountain Stone Sculptures

Baoding Mountain stone sculptures in Dazu County, the great Vajrayana ashram painstakingly made by Zhao Zhifeng who was a famous monk in the Southern Song Dynasty for 70 years, are well-known for their grand scale, rich information, and complete system. However, most Baoding Mountain sculptures have bred a variety of diseases after more than nine hundred years of wind and rain. Rock mass has weathered, desquamated, even fractured and collapsed; water seepage makes rock mass weaker; the extremely moist environment lets original intonaco and colored drawing layer chap and exfoliated; semi-outdoor preserving environment leads to the deposition of mud and water spots on rock mess, which severely influences the appreciation of sculptures. Therefore, to analyze its pigment of colored drawing by scientific and technological means is of great guiding significance to protect and repair work.The analytical methods used in the process of experiments are scanning electron microscopy, energy spectrum analysis, laser Raman analysis, and X-ray diffraction analysis, which reveal element composition of material mainly from the aspects of morphology, elements and microstructure. Results show that the red pigment used in Baoding Mountain stone colored drawings is cinnabar and iron oxide red, blue pigment is mixture of lapis lazuli and ultramarine blue, black paint for carbon black, green paint for stone green copper and arsenic acid. From the past mural and painting pigment, these pigments are ancient common mineral pigment, but arsenic acid copper green paint is only found at thousand-hand guanyin statues in Baoding Mountain, and the research on its properties and application situation is not very deep.Quartz, gypsum and chalk, the possible material of original intonaco, were also found during the analysis of colored drawing layers. Baoding Mountain stone sculptures have been repainted for many times in history. From the sample section, there is multi-layered colored drawing and mono-layered colored drawing, no colored drawing for base coat and also colored drawing on base coat, and the technology is relatively simple.In ancient Chinese murals and painted mineral pigments commonly red pigment with iron oxide red, cinnabar and minium; blue pigment with lapis lazuli, ultramarine blue, and blue copper; black pigment is mainly black; green pigment with malachite, Paris green, green earth, copper arsenate and so on. These pigments often used alone, but there are also mixed use, which may to modified pigment defects character, may also be to mix more in line with the expression of the theme color.