This article explores the materials and techniques of gilding in the Serbian wall painting of the 13th and early 14th centuries. The investigation focuses on the pictorial decoration of the churches at Studenica, Mileševa, Sopoćani, Gradac and Banjska, all founded by members of the Serbian royalty. The murals of these churches originally featured backgrounds covered with gold leaf and patterned to mimic mosaic cubes—an expensive and fragile form of decoration of which only traces now survive. Research was conducted through a combination of in situ examination, sampling and laboratory microanalyses, with the aim to identify the composition of the materials used and to reconstruct the painters’ working methods. The results reveal a highly unusual, even experimental, system of gilding. In all but one instance, the painters employed leaves of what is known as ‘part gold’—a laminate produced by beating two sheets of gold and silver together, which was seldom applied to images on the wall and never on such a massive scale. The article's goal is twofold: first, to present new data on an important and innovative, yet poorly understood, form of decoration; and second, to lay the foundation for a comprehensive art-historical study of the Serbian gilded murals with simulated tessellation and their significance for understanding the changing dynamic between painting and mosaic in the later Middle Ages.

中文翻译：

---

中世纪塞尔维亚壁画中的大规模镀金和马赛克模拟

本文探讨了 13 世纪和 14 世纪初塞尔维亚壁画中的镀金材料和技术。调查的重点是 Studenica、Mileševa、Sopoćani、Gradac 和 Banjska 教堂的图案装饰，这些教堂均由塞尔维亚皇室成员创立。这些教堂的壁画最初以覆盖着金箔的背景为特色，并模仿马赛克立方体的图案——一种昂贵而脆弱的装饰形式，现在仅存留下痕迹。研究是通过结合原位检查、取样和实验室微观分析，目的是确定所用材料的成分并重建画家的工作方法。结果揭示了一个非常不寻常的，甚至是实验性的镀金系统。除了一个例子，画家们都使用了所谓的“部分黄金”——一种通过将两片金和银打在一起而制成的层压板，这种材料很少应用于墙上的图像，也从未如此大规模。这篇文章的目标有两个：第一，展示一种重要的、创新的、但知之甚少的装饰形式的新数据；其次，