The painting in the Assembly Hall of Five Northern Provinces is the largest house painting discovered in Shaanxi Province to date. In order to scientifically preserve and restore the painting, optical microscopy, x-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy with an attached energy-dispersive spectrometer(SEM-EDS) were combined to analyze its material composition and painting technique. The results show that the making of the mural involved four steps:plastering the walls with two coarse layers made of clay, sand, and rice straw; smoothing the plaster with a layer of mixed lime, clay, sand, and cotton; preparing the ground layer with a layer of kaolin; and finally, painting on top of the foundational surface layer. This paper finds that the selection of materials corresponds to the principle of using local resources.
