Vermilion / Cinnabar
Natural · Antiquity to 19th century (largely replaced by cadmium red in the 20th)
Cinnabar (mercury sulfide) is the natural mineral historically ground to produce vermilion pigment — a real, documented toxicity that any historical vermilion object should be handled with care around.
The grey/tan host rock fills most of this close-up photograph, so an automated whole-frame scan would be dominated by rock rather than the cinnabar itself — the palette above was hand-picked from the visible red mineral."Cinnabar from Czech Republic" by Jan Helebrant, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsLicence details
- Source:
- Wikimedia Commons
- Creator:
- Jan Helebrant
- Licence:
- CC BY-SA 2.0 — free to share and adapt commercially, provided the work is attributed and any adaptation is shared under the same licence.
- Reviewed:
- 2026-07-25
High toxicity
Contains mercury; historically handled with far less protection than modern safety standards would require.
Mercury-based; historical objects containing this pigment should not be handled without appropriate conservation-level care. Not used in modern consumer paint.
- Source material
- Mineral cinnabar (mercury sulfide), later also produced synthetically
- Geography
- Used across the ancient Mediterranean and East Asia
- Earliest documented use
- Antiquity
- Cost & availability
- Moderately to highly valued depending on period and source purity.
- Production (historical summary)
- Mined as the mineral cinnabar and ground; a synthetic version was also produced from mercury and sulfur from the medieval period onward.
- Stability & lightfastness
- Can darken on prolonged exposure to light in some historical formulations. (variable)
- Replacement / obsolescence
- Largely replaced in modern paint by cadmium red and other synthetic reds, which do not carry the same mercury hazard.
Notable uses
- Roman wall painting (notably at Pompeii)
- East Asian lacquerware and seal ink
Sources
- The National Gallery, London (conservation and pigment research) — The National Gallery
- Wikipedia (colour, pigment and dye history articles) — Wikimedia Foundation