Books and Proceedings

Segreti per colori [Secrets of colours] is a collection of recipes for the preparation of paints, translated into Croatian for the first time in this Croatian Conservation Institute’s edition. The text, also known as the Bologna Manuscript, is a valuable source of insight into the technology of paint manufacture in the late Middle Ages. With almost four hundred recipes for the preparation of pigments, paints, gildings and other materials for making artworks, decorative artefacts and utensils, this manual is a well-spring of information available to researchers of various professions, especially relevant for conservators and other experts in the field of cultural heritage protection.

The translators, conservator-restorer Jurica Matijević and chemistry engineer Dr. Jelica Zelić, supplemented the translation with contemporary insights into the materials and chemical processes woven into the old recipes, which they elaborated in detail in the notes that accompany the translation and the text in the separate section of the book. It is precisely this original scientific contribution that makes this edition unique even internationally, as it can be directly applied in the conservation and protection of cultural heritage.

Croatian Conservation Institute and the International Trust for Croatian Monuments financed the publishing of the book, in Croatian titled Tajne o bojama. Priručnik za pripravu boja iz 15. stoljeća [Secrets of colours. A 15th-century handbook on the preparation of paints].

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