Pint of Postdoc Speaker Recap - Dr. Marcie Wiggins

“Normothermic machine perfusion as a platform for assessment and repair”

Dr. Marcie Wiggins

Edited by:

Jennifer Blackburn (assisted by Aileen Fernandez)

Abstract:

Jainism, whose basic teaching is one of non-violence, is one of the oldest religions to date. Jain religious manuscripts, containing written text alongside detailed paintings in gold, red, and blue, have been used as ritual objects in teaching and prayer for centuries. The Yale University Art Gallery has several of these manuscripts, four of which date as far back as the 14^th to 16^th centuries, the golden age of manuscript production in Western India. For our September 2020 Pint of Postdoc series, Marcie Wiggins shared her research into how artists made these intricate works. To get detailed descriptions of artists’ materials and workshop methodologies, Marcie studied miniature paintings from one of the most fundamental Jain holy texts, the Kalpasūtra. Using the chemical identification of paint pigments she determined how paint layers were overlapped. Briefly, she used large area x-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) scanning coupled with spectroscopic methods to generate maps of the elemental distribution across the painted surface. Closer examination with a stereoscopic microscope revealed the order the paints were applied to create the illustration.

This is the first time that elemental maps have been coupled with imaging and visual examination to examine Jain manuscripts. The fluidity of these techniques enabled deepened exploration of these materials and provided comparison points for other Jain and Indian artwork, ultimately providing a better understanding of the methodology practiced, and their importance in art historical, religious, and social contexts. These findings have also provided insight on other and unusual pieces in the collection, resulting in their identification as fakes.