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Stood in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang and realized my phone tour guide was wrong about the paint
I was in Dunhuang 3 weeks ago and spent about 40 minutes in Cave 285 just staring at the ceiling. A guide told our group the blue pigment was lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, which is what I learned in my art history class 12 years back. But a sign near the exit said newer tests show some caves also used locally made synthetic blue, which changes the whole trade story. My old textbook said Silk Road pigments came from one far away source and that was it. Standing there, I kept thinking about how much of what I was taught has been rewritten since I graduated. Does anyone know of other sites where the pigment sourcing got overturned like this?
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patriciah511mo ago
Oh wow, I heard a podcast about this exact thing with Egyptian blue. They always said it came from one place in Egypt but turns out there were small workshops making it all over the Mediterranean. Same deal with the Maya blue thing too, scientists argued for years about how they made it and where the stuff came from. It seems like every few years someone tests old paint and the whole map gets redrawn. Kind of makes you wonder how many other "facts" from art history class are just waiting to get corrected.
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