Pigments: Historical Cool Hues
Artists' Cool Colored Pigments Used Prior to the 18th Century
Aug 19, 2008
Many ancient pigments were very rare and expensive, and paintings done with them were highly valued because of the cost of the pigments as much as their artistic quality. This article looks at the pigments cools pigments: the blues, the greens, and the violets (purples).
Blue Historical Pigments
Perhaps the best known historical, mineral blue is azurite, a carbonate of copper. It is a coarsely powdered copper ore quite commonly used in the Middle Ages.
Another commonly used blue, lapis lazuli, resembles azurite but is chemically quite different. Lapis lazuli is made from a semi-precious gemstone. Both it and azurite were quite expensive, but painters used them because of their beauty and permanence.
Modern ultramarine blue pigment is actually a modern, inexpensive, synthetic version of Lapis lazuli. Also, in recent years, both azurite and genuine lapis lazuli have again become available, particularly in professional watercolors.
Indigo was a common organic blue imported from India. It is still used in dyes and occasionally in artists' colors although it is not very permanent. Other organic blues were woad and turnsole. Woad was used in cloth dyes and in painting but perhaps the most famous use of it historically was as a dark blue stain on the skin of British warriors at the time of the Roman invasion.
Green Historical Pigments
Malachite was the most common, ancient, historical, metallic green. It is chemically similar to azurite blue and was frequently found near or mixed in with azurite. Neither azurite or malachite work very well in oil paints but are very beautiful in older media such as true fresco and egg tempera.
Verdigris (acetate of copper) and was widely used, particularly for underpainting flesh tones. It was a beautiful color and in some cases has survived very well, particularly in paintings (illuminations) on the pages of books, but it is sensitive to environmental pollutants and to lead white and often has turned black with age if exposed to air.
The historical organic greens were mostly produced from the sap and berry juices of plants. The original "sap green" was often produced from the same buckthorn berry as buckthorn yellow. The fully ripe berries produce sap green while the unripe berries produce the yellow. Others among the many historical organic greens were iris green, made from iris flowers, and honeysuckle and nightshade green.
Violet Historical Pigments
The best known historical purple pigment was murex or "royal" purple. It was absurdly expensive to produce. Made from the murex and similar shellfish, with each shell containing only one tiny drop of this vivid purple color.
It probably took about 50,000 murex shells to produce enough color to dye one royal robe. Murex purple was so expensive that it was actually against the law for anyone but a member of royalty to wear a robe dyed with it.
There were a few other purple such as folium and archil, mostly made from plants. However, just as today our most limited range of pigments are the purples, the historical world had to use the few purple pigments they had or, more commonly, as we often still do, mix their purples from reds and blues.
A Note On Historical Earth Pigments
This really does not need a separate category since most of the same or very similar natural earth colors used in historical periods are still used now.
Sources:
- The Materials and Technique of Medieval Painting, by Daniel V. Thompson, Dover Publications, New York, 1956.
- The Practice of Tempera Painting, by Daniel V. Thompson, Dover Publications, New York, 1962.
- The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, by Ralph Mayer, Viking Press, 1982.
Read the related article, "Pigments: Historical Warm Hues."
