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Cerulean Blue in Historical Paintings: Magnesium Identification and Pigment Replication

Václava Antušková¹, Jana Luxová², Radka Šefců¹

¹Chemical-Technological Laboratory, National Gallery Prague, Prague 1, Czech Republic.

|April 5, 2026

Abstract

None:

Cerulean blue is a pigment that was introduced to the art market at the turn of the 1850s and 1860s, with its composition stated as CoSnO₃. For this project, the pigment was synthesised using historical recipes and analysed. The investigation involved examining various conditions for its preparation, such as different reactants, solution concentrations, precipitate ageing times, firing temperatures and calcination times. All of the samples obtained were green in colour, and their composition was defined as a mixture of SnO₂ and Co₂SnO₄. To gain a more accurate understanding of pigment composition, historical paint samples and commercially available pigments were analysed. These pigments were found to contain a relatively high amount of magnesium, so new pigment samples were prepared with added magnesium. The obtained samples have the desired blue colour; their composition is Mg_2-xCo_xSnO₄ and SnO₂. Using K₂SnO₃·3H₂O as a reactant produced more reproducible results than using SnCl₄·5H₂O. The reconstruction of pigment production methods revealed gaps in historical recipes. The collected data allowed us to specify the composition of cerulean blue pigment as Mg_2-xCo_xSnO₄ with a variable amount of SnO₂.

Keywords:

X‐ray diffraction cerulean blue cobalt materials science pigment

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