 The wonderfully brilliant dualite colors in many medieval manuscripts came from animal, vegetable and mineral sources Mineral sources to note are alchamarine which is over the sea coming from that brilliant blue of lapis lazuli And that can often be confused with citramarine this side of the sea or azurite Which is a slightly greener blue An iron-based compound was rubrica a lovely red color and this was used for the headings or the instructions in books And from this we get rubrics Minium comes from baking flake white to give an orangy red as here And it was used to outline the medieval miniatures and because they were outlined in minium they were called miniatures They weren't called miniatures because they were small as they weren't always small Dragon's blood is a mixture as everybody surely knows between a dragon and an elephant fighting and is the intermingling of their blood Vegetable and animal sources include carmine here from little insects Saffron a yellow color blue from indigo and woad and pink from madder