Imported Paper, Local Pigments: Charting the Materiality of the 1764 Manuscript Map of the Dagua River Region

Research on the materiality of Spanish Colonial artistic heritage contributes to our knowledge about culture, society, and artistic practices of the Spanish Americas. This article presents the results of an interdisciplinary and multi-analytical investigation on the Manuscript Map of the Dagua River Region, a large and vibrantly colored cartographic work produced in Cali, Colombia in 1764 and held today in the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division. To date, material analysis studies have identified colorants used in Mesoamerican codices and pigments used in the creation of manuscripts, paintings, and sculpture from the Spanish colonial Andes (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru). Less analysis has been undertaken on Spanish colonial manuscript maps from South America. This article aims to address this gap in the scholarship and provides some of the first information available on pigments used in eighteenth-century manuscript maps produced in the Spanish Americas. Noninvasive techniques including multispectral imaging, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy reveal that the map was made of imported paper and regionally mined minerals.