The values of some tubes of paints may make modern-day artists gasp, but often there’s a cheaper alternative, for instance a synthetic version of a pigment. Now imagine painting in a era if the most incredible of all blues was more costly than even gold, yet due to the symbolism connected with it you just needed to put it to use. To be doing work in an occasion when using expensive pigments in the painting was seen as a act of devotion to God as well as your painting’s value was judged by the price of the pigments utilized in it. (A commission could even specify just how much ultramarine was to be used!)
This was the situation European artists were in during the early Renaissance (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), when pure, intense painting color was thought to be a reflection of God’s glory. These purest colors were ultramarine, gold, and vermilion. Ultramarine was described by Cennino Cennini, the 15th century Italian artist who wrote on the techniques with the great masters, as “illustrious, beautiful, and most perfect, beyond other colors”. Artists reserved it which are more revered of subjects, like the robes from the Madonna and Christ.
All the ultramarine used in Europe was imported from the mines at Badakshan, in what is currently Afghanistan. Extracted from your semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, it absolutely was extremely lightfast, bright dark blue. The extraction process was complicated and labor-intensive, which added to its cost. The pigment was imported through Venice in Italy, so it’s found in a lot of paintings by Italian artists, who had relatively easy usage of it.
Durer is quoted as saying: “I used the very best colors I possibly could get, especially good ultramarine … and since i have had prepared enough, I added two more coats at the conclusion so it would go longer.”
The Decline inside the Worth of Ultramarine
The thought of inherent price of a color diminished with the progression of oil painting. One of the reasons with this was that ultramarine needed to be mixed with white when combined with oils to regain the intensity it had when used in combination with egg tempera. In the late Renaissance-era paintings we begin to see a selection of blues as ultramarine was blended with white, for example in the works of Titian and Durer.
The ultimate blow were only available in 1828 each time a synthetic version of ultramarine was introduced by the French colormaker Jean-Baptiste Guimet. It had been about a tenth of the price of the natural pigment, and is also still known as French ultramarine today.
Giving a Medieval Feel to a Painting
As well as the usage of ultramarine, there are certain actions you can take to provide a medieval feel to some painting. Use large regions of intense, opaque pigments. Make use of a limited array of colors and enormous aspects of more ‘expensive’ pigments. Vermilion is tough to discover, so substitute a red having a high opacity, for example cadmium red. Understand that medieval painters didn’t take care of yellow paints - why would they use these ‘inferior’ pigments if they used a great deal gold leaf?
Realism had not been important, so as opposed to painting realistic backgrounds, such as trees or sky, use flat areas of gold leaf or opaque color. Any figures within the painting should be proportioned in accordance with their importance, not their actual heights.
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