Closeup of some of the pigments used on the illuminated opening page of the Persian manuscript, Gulistan by the thirteenth-century poet, Sadi, one of Persia’s great literary masters. In addition to gold, the colours appearing on the illuminated opening page (not all shown in this detail) include white, red, orange, blue, yellow, black and green. These colours were identified through Raman spectroscopy as the pigments: white lead, red lead, vermilion, lazurite, orpiment, and carbon black. The green pigment is currently unidentified See previous image in this set for further information.