Organic colours were made from plants or insects, either painted directly as a dye, or precipitated onto an inorganic colour such as chalk to form a lake which could be stored. Organics tended to be used locally and seasonally, but the most highly prized colours were traded.

The oldest known dyestuff, madder root Rubia tinctorium was commonly used as a vivid pink dye for cloth and leather, as well as in manuscript painting. Brazil wood Caesalpinia echinata was also used as a red colourant. It was first imported from Asia, and then in vast quantities from the Americas, where it gave its name to a country rich in these dye trees.

The berries from buckthorn Rhamnus cathartica (shown in the image) can be used to make yellow or green colours, depending on the season. This shrub occurs across Europe and the Near East and was used locally in East Anglian manuscript painting. Woad was also cultivated in Western Europe but plants from the family Indigofera were used widely to obtain a fine blue colour through vat dyeing.

Animal derived colours were rarefied and this was reflected in their trade and price. An unusual and rare purple was harvested from the marine molluscs murex with great effort. In antiquity this colour was reserved exclusively for the emperor. Lac is the resinous secretion of an insect which was imported from India. The dye was often preserved as a clothlet. The small insect kermes was collected around the Eastern Mediterranean and sold at great prices as a scarlet dye for silk and manuscript painting.

Inorganic colours were made by grinding naturally occurring minerals, or through chemical processing of other materials.

Of all the naturally occurring mineral colours, ultramarine was the most valuable. Derived from lapis lazuli, it was traded from a single mine in Afghanistan to the rest of the known world as the finest blue pigment in existence. It was shrouded in mystery, and was known only to have come from ‘across the sea’. The yellow mineral orpiment, a sulphide of arsenic, was used to imitate gold and as such it was the most common yellow colour to occur in manuscript paintings, in spite of its extreme toxicity.

The finest sources of the red mineral cinnabar came from Spain. A true red was highly sought, and by the fifteenth century the manufacture of vermilion – a synthetic sulphide of mercury – was well established.
Lead could be baked to create lead white, then again to make red lead or minium. These lead colours are bright and opaque, but can discolour and flake with time. Verdigris is perhaps the most common and well known synthetic colour. This bright green is made by treating copper with acid and the beautiful colour often remains corrosive, damaging the page it is painted on.

The naturally occurring green mineral malachite also contains copper, and occurs naturally alongside its blue sister colour azurite, these colours are often quite stable. Azurite was often used as a cheaper alternative to ultramarine. Insoluble pigments were ground using a stone or glass muller.

Genuine gold, silver and various alloys were all used in manuscript painting. Either ground as shell colours, or applied as solid squares of metal leaf, metallics gave medieval manuscripts their beautiful illuminated lustre.