Orpiment Quotes

Newcomers to manuscripts sometimes ask what such books tell us about the societies that created them. At one level, these Gospel Books describe nothing, for they are not local chronicles but standard Latin translations of religious texts from far away. At the same time, this is itself extraordinarily revealing about Ireland. No one knows how literacy and Christianity had first reached the islands of Ireland, possibly through North Africa. This was clearly no primitive backwater but a civilization which could now read Latin, although never occupied by the Romans, and which was somehow familiar with the texts and artistic designs which have unambiguous parallels in the Coptic and Greek churches, such as carpet pages and Canon tables. Although the Book of Kells itself is as uniquely Irish as anything imaginable, it is a Mediterranean text and the pigments used in making it include orpiment, a yellow made from arsenic sulphide, exported from Italy, where it is found in volcanoes. There are clearly lines of trade and communication unknown to us. ~ Christopher De Hamel

Nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist, arsenic, sublimate, realgar, tartar, orpiment, verdegris. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Mason is able to inspect the long Map, fragrant, elegantly cartouch'd with Indians and Instruments, at last. Ev'ry place they ran it, ev'ry House pass'd by, Road cross'd, the Ridge-lines and Creeks, Forests and Glades, Water ev'ry-where, and the Dragon nearly visible. "So, - so. This is the Line as all shall see it after its Copper-Plate 'Morphosis, - and all History remember? This is what ye expect me to sign off on?" "Not the worst I've handed in. And had they wish'd to pay for Coloring? Why, tha'd scarcely knaah the Place . . . ?" "This is beauteous Work. Emerson was right, Jeremiah. You were flying, all the time." Dixon, his face darken'd by the Years of Weather, may be allowing himself to blush in safety. "Could have us'd a spot of Orpiment, all the same. Some Lapis . . . ? ~ Thomas Pynchon