Mining for European Art

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many European oil painters sought ways to depict scenes around them as accurately as possible, with attention to subtle color and the play of light on fabric or metal. While we might think about this trend in terms of cultural shifts and ideas about what makes good art, National Gallery of Art researcher Barbara H. Berrie writes that another angle to consider is…mining.

In the early sixteenth century, Berrie writes, Europeans began importing large quantities of silver from the Americas, reducing the incentives to seek the metal out in Europe. So mine operators shifted to a focus on rare metal ores and minerals. This increased the supply of a variety of pigments and other raw materials for paints, which, along with new processing techniques, offered new opportunities for artists.

At this time, it was a technical and financial challenge for painters to produce the hues and visual effects they wanted. For example, ultramarine, derived from the lapis lazuli stone, was prized for the deep blue it produced. But because purifying it was a complicated process, it was very expensive and could be used only in extremely costly works or extremely small quantities. Artists often painted a thin layer of it on top of less-prized azurite blue paint.

As miners shifted their focus, Berrie writes, one material they increasingly excavated was smalt, a potash glass with cobalt content that gives it a deep blue color. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the quantities mined increased, and the price fell.

Initially, it was mainly ceramic makers who used smalt. It was a more difficult material for painters because its color dulled when mixed with oil. To avoid this, artists began painting canvases with lead white and then sprinkling the wet paint with particles of smalt.

Similarly, miners helped revive the use of antimony, which had been used to make yellow glass and pottery glazes in ancient Egypt and in parts of Europe up until the fourth century. This pigment was rediscovered in the form of Naples yellow, an oxide of lead and antimony found in the mines. The pigment appeared in ceramics starting in the late fifteenth century and then in paintings starting in the early seventeenth.

Beyond the pigments themselves, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists also created effects of light and color using thin, translucent layers of paint. While products like linseed oil or turpentine could help achieve this, Berrie suggests that mineral oil, or naphtha, was a game-changer thanks to its effectiveness in thinning paint and quickness to evaporate. Like smalt and Naples yellow, it was a product of mining that became increasingly available over time.

Berrie writes that, initially, a small number of painters adopted each new artistic material, experimenting with ways to work with them to achieve their desired effects. As they developed techniques for making the pigments work on the canvas, and as the materials got more plentiful and cheaper, more artists followed.

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