For over three thousand years, a range of metallic corrosion products were manufactured for use as artists' colours. The talk looks at recipes for making pigments in artists' treatises and the use of pigments in Old Master paintings to examine the historic connection between metals and planets. It focuses on a recipe that involves mercury.
We will look at medieval artists' materials and methods in a manner as close as possible to the way painters themselves saw them in the middle ages. To do that, we must adopt the world view of 13th/14th century European artisans and assume that they were reasonably well-informed about science, philosophy and religion, but were not too worried about the finer details. We will encounter general principles that pervade their traditional world view, giving a broader understanding than just alchemy or paint.
We will look at medieval artists' materials and methods in a manner as close as possible to the way painters themselves saw them in the middle ages. To do that, we must adopt the world view of 13th/14th century European artisans and assume that they were reasonably well-informed about science, philosophy and religion, but were not too worried about the finer details. We will encounter general principles that pervade their traditional world view, giving a broader understanding than just alchemy or paint.
