Displaying items by tag: mineral

Vincent van Gogh’s reds have been turning white, but the exact reason why has remained unclear. Research published last month out of Belgium has identified a rare lead mineral in his paint as the missing link.

As reported this week by Matthew Gunther at the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemistry World, a team at the University of Antwerp examined a microscopic sample of van Gogh’s “Wheat Stack Under a Cloudy Sky” (“Heuschober an einem Regentag”) from 1889 at the Kröller-Müller Museum using X-ray powder diffraction tomography, basically focusing beams to reveal crystalline compounds.

The renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased a collection of 4,000-year-old Egyptian artifacts found a century ago by a British explorer, averting a plan to auction the antiquities that had drawn criticism from historians.

The Treasure of Harageh collection consists of 37 items such as flasks, vases and jewelry inlaid with lapis lazuli, a rare mineral. Discovered by famed British archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the relics date to roughly 1900 B.C., excavated from a tomb near the city of Fayum. Portions of the excavated antiquities were given in 1914 to donors in St. Louis who helped underwrite the dig.