Intention and its Relation with Colors Used in Royal Qajar Mural Painting

In the 19th century, professional conservators started using the science and scientific attitude in the process of conservation studies. With the improvement of scientific methods, conservators gained the ability to use analytical approaches to solve the problems. Emphasizing on using chemical and physical studies had made a new field in conservation of arts. In this paper, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) is used to identify the pigments and the base of mural paintings with the goal of acknowledging the role of science and the intention of artist in application specific colors and methods at creating the royal Qajar mural paintings. This analysis is necessary to improve the level of decision making for conservation and restoration. The results of this study shows the Qajar artist chose the colors with full cognizance and the only differentiation is observed in blue pigments, where Lapis Lazuli was used in the “Saf-e-Salam-e-Fathalishah”. Lazuli blue is known for being resistant to weathering and for its fluorescent feature, and transmits the intention of the artist to the viewer in the best way. The approach of this research in data gathering through studying the available sources about Qajar mural painting with the consideration of artist intention along with the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the samples from three Qajar royal wall paintings from Golestan palace. These wall paintings now assembled in Negarestan palace, discussing the artist intention in choosing/applying materials and methods in creating mural paintings of Qajar era. Artist’s intention can have different levels of complexity, but conservators identify a familiar problem as the main one. Natural causes and physical conditions change the features of the artwork. Time, dust, or undesirable incidents always create a condition in which the art work is dimmed, changed or damaged. In other words, the colors are dried, cracked or flaked, the canvas is swollen and panels are detached. Moreover, the organic pigments become pale or colorless and metal pigments can be oxidized and turn black and brown from green and red. Neither the artist nor the conservator have access to stable ingredients. Conservators know how hard controlling or forecasting such problems can be and these factors add on to the complexity of the job. Except the goal, choices of the artist in materials will be affected by physical damage, quality loss and deterioration. Artworks cannot be kept in the final form which the artist created, although Qajar mural paintings have their own visual features, they also have their own distinctive ingredients and method of painting. One of these are the unique method of each artist. Laboratory researches showed that the only difference between the two mural paintings were the blue pigments. This research aims to answer how choosing the ingredient and method with the intention of the artist in the time of creating the artwork can help us to understand the art better. So, the purpose of this research is to study the royal Qajar mural paintings based on the chemical analysis to understand the intention of the artist in creation of these two artworks.