About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherBoyars Publishers, LTD., MARION

ISBN-100714531723

ISBN-139780714531724

eBay Product ID (ePID)73066472

Product Key Features

Number of Pages336 Pages

Publication NameAlchemy of Paint : Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages

LanguageEnglish

SubjectFolklore & Mythology, History / Medieval, Techniques / Color

Publication Year2009

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaArt, Social Science

AuthorSpike Bucklow

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height1.1 in

Item Weight16 Oz

Item Length8.6 in

Item Width5.3 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceCollege Audience

LCCN2009-024496

Dewey Edition22

TitleLeadingThe

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal751.2

SynopsisThe Alchemy of Paint is a critique of the modern world, which Spike Bucklow sees as the product of seventeenth-century ideas about science. In modern times, we have divorced color from its origins, using it for commercial advantage. Spike Bucklow shows us how in medieval times, color had mystical significance far beyond the enjoyment of shade and hue. Each chapter demonstrates the mindset of medieval Europe and is devoted to just one color, acknowledging its connections with life in the pre-modern world. Colors examined and explained in detail include a midnight blue called ultramarine, an opaque red called vermilion, a multitude of colors made from metals, a transparent red called dragonsblood, and, finally, gold. Today, "scarlet" describes a color, but it was originally a type of cloth. Henry VI's wardrobe accounts from 1438 to 1489 show that his cheapest scarlet was 14.2s.6d. and that scarlets could fetch up to twice that price. In the fifteenth century, a mid-priced scarlet cost more than two thousand kilos of cheese or one thousand liters of wine. This expense accounts for the custom of giving important visitors the "red carpet treatment." The book looks at how color was "read" in the Middle Ages and returns to materials to look at the hidden meaning of the artists' version of the philosopher's stone. The penultimate chapter considers why everyone has always loved gold. Spike Bucklow is a conservation scientist working with oil paintings at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge., The Alchemy of Paint examines pre-modern artists' recipes for a handful of pigments, including lapis lazuli, gold and vermilion. The author was, until 2022, Director of Research at the Hamilton Kerr Institute and Professor of Material Culture at the University of Cambridge. The book has become a recognised text in the undergraduate and postgraduate teaching of history, art history and the history of science. Historic pigment recipes - many of which were reconstructed by the author - provide evidence that practicing craftspeople had a detailed grasp of the sophisticated physical and cosmological theories that defined reality in pre-modern Europe. As such, the book is an in-depth, and heavily-referenced, primer for the pre-modern European world-view. For example, the chapter on the purification of lapis lazuli - to make ultramarine - is a practical example of how so-called Aristotelian four-element theory helped people engage productively with the material world. The first half of the book shows how theories - like the four elements, hylomorphism, emanation, etc - were reflected in practice in recipes that 'worked', as well as in recipes that 'did not work' - like dragonsblood and mercury blue - but were nonetheless faithfully repeated. The second half of the book revisits materials - including vermilion and gold - to show that widely-recognised multi-levelled meanings were inherent in materials. Physical materials could therefore contribute metaphysical meanings to the mainly religious objects that incorporated them.

LC Classification NumberN7432.7