Sea Snail Masterpiece

Since embarking on this project, I have researched many publications with specific information about pigments and their history. Much is known today about pigments of the past because of scholars such as those in the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP). This committee set about to discover and determine which of Rembrandt’s paintings were authentic and which were done by “the school of Rembrandt”. The latest edition of Art in the Making released in September of 2006 has a wealth of information about the materials and pigments used by Rembrandt. One can surmise most other Dutch masters used the same or similar materials.

In the laboratory, scientists in the RRP were allowed to take tiny pin point flecks of paint from the surface of certain paintings by Rembrandt to examine under the microscope. Because of the nature of certain pigments’ characteristics, it can be determined what varieties were used. There are also inventory lists of suppliers used by artists during this time that reveal which pigments were available. The Craftsman’s Handbook:Il Libro dell’ Arte by Cennino Cennini has been an indispensable resource for my research also.

In the 17th century and before, the pigments can basically be divided into 2 categories:

1. Mineral  and
2. Organic

For the most part, natural earth mineral pigments were used since antiquity. The second category of pigments come from other sources and were widely used. These are called organic colors and were made from insects, bones, plants, and shells with varying degrees of permanency. The mineral colors in common use were:

many earth tones, burnt and raw umbers, many varieties of red and yellow ochres, azurite, lapis, malachite, white made from lead, raw and burnt siennas, and cinnabar(a beautiful burnt red).

The organic class of pigments included colors such as:

carmine (made from the cochineal insect), Dutch pink (made from Buckthorn berries), saffron (made from flowers of the Indian plant), mummy (made from ground up mummies, it’s true!), indigo or woad (the color worn by Braveheart).

Many of these organic pigments proved to be unreliably impermanent and have since been replaced with synthetics. For my purpose in this project, I plan to use only colors of a proven permanency rating but only those from the 17th century and before. By the way, a red purple used since antiquity called,

Tyrean Purple, or Imperial Purple is still available today. It takes 10,000 large sea snails to make one gram of pigment. These snails excrete a purple dye which is then used to make the pigment. The cost:

$935.00 for 1/4 gram

I am sure I will skip this one. Next time, more on the dangers.