Minium Mineral

Hey dear Hiveans, I hope you are all doing well and you had a day that brought one or the other positive experience into your life. In this post, I would like to bring you a mineral a little closer and hope you can expand your knowledge a little.

This orange mineral that can be seen here is a representative of the mineral class of oxides and hydroxides, which is also known as Minium. Minium has been known since ancient times, but it was named at the beginning of the 19th century by the mineralogist James Smithson (1795 - 1829) who named it after the Río Miño which is over 300 kilometers long and flows through Spain and one of the largest rivers of the autonomous community of Galicia and it also flows through the border between Spain and Portugal. It is a rarely occurring lead mineral and the color can be brown or red in addition to orange and it is important to know that you have to be extremely careful with the mineral due to the toxicity and for collectors it is therefore important that you should store it in closed containers! In the past, the toxicity was not yet so well known and it was still used in many ways, such as as a color pigment for various types of works of art and in addition it was also used as a make-up or preservative. Nowadays, it is of course no longer used for these purposes due to its toxic properties and it is associated with being able to trigger a whole range of health complaints and despite the high content of lead, it is uninteresting due to its rarity as an ore.

For the production of paints, it was mixed with oil paints to better preserve them and it was often used to paint fences or other objects. Minium was already known to the ancient Romans who used it for the gladiator games and also Roman field troops used it as make-up to celebrate their triumph and painted their face with it. Roman sculptors also often used Minium to paint their figures with it and it was also important in the Middle Ages and appears again and again in old writings and has strongly influenced history. The Roman scholar Pliny the elder also described the mineral and mentioned it as a pigment and also of Dioscorides as well as in ancient China it was already mentioned and the first traditions on the use of artists probably come from ancient Greece. It has particularly influenced the art era of the Renaissance and has also influenced the history of book printing. It is created as a secondary mineral in lead containing deposits and finally I would describe it all rare mineral which is historically deeply anchored and has also shaped art history, it was still used until the 20th Century, where it has been displaced more and more over time, which of course can also be traced back to the toxic properties.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like my new entry! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!