The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting

The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting
Author: Daniel V. Thompson
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2012-05-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0486142035

Medieval painters built up a tremendous range of technical resources for obtaining brilliance and permanence. In this volume, an internationally known authority on medieval paint technology describes these often jealously guarded recipes, lists of materials, and processes. Based upon years of study of medieval manuscripts and enlarged by laboratory analysis of medieval paintings, this book discusses carriers and grounds, binding media, pigments, coloring materials, and metals used in painting. It describes the surfaces that the medieval artist painted upon, detailing their preparation. It analyzes binding media, discussing relative merits of glair versus gums, oil glazes, and other matters. It tells how the masters obtained their colors, how they processed them, and how they applied them. It tells how metals were prepared for use in painting, how gold powders and leaf were laid on, and dozens of other techniques. Simply written, easy to read, this book will be invaluable to art historians, students of medieval painting and civilization, and historians of culture. Although it contains few fully developed recipes, it will interest any practicing artist with its discussion of methods of brightening colors and assuring permanence. "A rich feast," The Times (London). "Enables the connoisseur, artist, and collector to obtain the distilled essence of Thompson's researches in an easily read and simple form," Nature (London). "A mine of technical information for the artist," Saturday Review of Literature.

The Materials of Medieval Painting

The Materials of Medieval Painting
Author: Daniel V. Thompson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-07-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781684223688

2019 Reprint of 1936 U.S. Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. Professor Thompson has written an extremely interesting and valuable book on a subject very rarely dealt with, the materials used by medieval painters, or as he calls it, " the cookery of art." In the first chapter the author discusses the various types of surfaces employed by the medieval painters, such as parchment, vellum, wood, walls, and canvas. In chapter two he deals with the different binding media that had to be used to bind the pigments to the different types of surfaces. The third and longest chapter deals with the pigments themselves. This book, written in a very pleasing style, will appeal not only to those interested in medieval painting itself, but to anyone who wishes further knowledge on various medieval plants, and on certain chemical problems of the Middle Ages.

Medieval Painting in Northern Europe

Medieval Painting in Northern Europe
Author: Unn Plahter
Publisher: Archetype Publications
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2006
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This text of analytical and art historical research on medieval painting and polychromy is published to commemorate the 70th birthday of Unn Plahter.

Mediaeval Painters' Materials and Techniques

Mediaeval Painters' Materials and Techniques
Author: Mark Clarke
Publisher: Archetype Publications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Artists' materials
ISBN: 9781904982647

Medieval painting was a craft. The anonymous Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium ('Book of various arts') is a handbook prescribing how that craft was to be practiced. It contains over five hundred art-technological instructions or 'recipes' in Latin. Unlike the vast majority of medieval artists' recipe books, this content is highly structured and organised, such as to form a complete handbook or course on painting. This Liber diversarum arcium is probably the most substantial and comprehensive medieval painters' technical recipe book to survive. It summarises the state-of-the art in the European workshops of the fourteenth century. This volume makes the Liber diversarum arcium usable to modern readers for the first time, by restoring the text in over 150 places where its corruption obscures the technical sense, by translating the text into English, and by providing a running commentary to explain the technical processes and technical terminology.

Painted Prayers

Painted Prayers
Author: Roger S. Wieck
Publisher:
Total Pages: 146
Release: 1997
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This book features 107 of the finest examples of illuminated pages from medieval and Renaissance Books of Hours. Roger Wieck's comprehensive text introduces the Book of Hours -- a "bestseller" for three hundred years -- to the general reader, discussing its iconography, the artists who illuminated this genre, and its role as a religious text in the lives of its owners. As a collection of both stirring words and inspiring images, the Book of Hours thus comprised a series of "painted prayers".

A Companion to Medieval Art

A Companion to Medieval Art
Author: Conrad Rudolph
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1040
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1119077729

A fully updated and comprehensive companion to Romanesque and Gothic art history This definitive reference brings together cutting-edge scholarship devoted to the Romanesque and Gothic traditions in Northern Europe and provides a clear analytical survey of what is happening in this major area of Western art history. The volume comprises original theoretical, historical, and historiographic essays written by renowned and emergent scholars who discuss the vibrancy of medieval art from both thematic and sub-disciplinary perspectives. Part of the Blackwell Companions to Art History, A Companion to Medieval Art, Second Edition features an international and ambitious range of contributions covering reception, formalism, Gregory the Great, pilgrimage art, gender, patronage, marginalized images, the concept of spolia, manuscript illumination, stained glass, Cistercian architecture, art of the crusader states, and more. Newly revised edition of a highly successful companion, including 11 new articles Comprehensive coverage ranging from vision, materiality, and the artist through to architecture, sculpture, and painting Contains full-color illustrations throughout, plus notes on the book’s many distinguished contributors A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, Second Edition is an exciting and varied study that provides essential reading for students and teachers of Medieval art.

The Practice of Tempera Painting

The Practice of Tempera Painting
Author: Daniel V. Thompson
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2012-06-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0486141640

Tempera painting, the method in which colors are mixed with some binding material other than oil (primarily egg yolk), is the earliest type of painting known to man. The wall paintings of ancient Egypt and Babylon are tempera, as are many of the paintings of Giotto, Lippi, Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, and many other masters. But in spite of the time-proven excellence of this technique — which boasts many clear advantages over oil paint — it does not receive the degree of attention from modern painters that it deserves. Part of the explanation for this neglect, surely, is the absence of sufficient information about the materials and procedures involved in tempera painting. The present volume, in fact, is virtually the only complete, authoritative, step-by-step treatment of the subject in the English language, D.V. Thompson wrote this book after an exhaustive study, over many years, of countless medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the British Museum and elsewhere, and is unquestionably the world's leading authority on tempera materials and processes. Beginning with an introductory chapter on the uses and limitations of tempera, the author covers such topics as the choice of material for the panel; propensities of various woods; preparing the panel for gilding; making the gesso mixture; methods of applying the gesso; planning the design of a tempera painting; use of tinted papers; application of metals to the panel; tools for gliding; handling and laying gold; combination gold and silver leafing; pigments and brushes; choice of palette; mixing the tempera; tempering and handling the colors; techniques of the actual painting; mordant gilding; permanence of tempera painting; varnishing; and artificial emulsion painting. The drawings and diagrams, illustrating the various materials and techniques, infinitely increase the clarity of the discussions. As a careful exposition of all aspects of authentic tempera painting, including many of the possible modern uses for this ancient method, this book actually stands alone. No one who is interested in tempera painting as a serious pursuit can afford to be without it.

The Agency of Things in Medieval and Early Modern Art

The Agency of Things in Medieval and Early Modern Art
Author: Grażyna Jurkowlaniec
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2017-09-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351681494

This volume explores the late medieval and early modern periods from the perspective of objects. While the agency of things has been studied in anthropology and archaeology, it is an innovative approach for art historical investigations. Each contributor takes as a point of departure active things: objects that were collected, exchanged, held in hand, carried on a body, assembled, cared for or pawned. Through a series of case studies set in various geographic locations, this volume examines a rich variety of systems throughout Europe and beyond. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315401867, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

How to Read Medieval Art

How to Read Medieval Art
Author: Wendy A. Stein
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2016-10-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588395979

The intensely expressive art of the Middle Ages was created to awe, educate and connect the viewer to heaven. Its power reverberates to this day, even among the secular. But experiencing the full meaning and purpose of medieval art requires an understanding of its narrative content. This volume introduces the subjects and stories most frequently depicted in medieval art, many of them drawn from the Bible and other religious literature. Included among the thirty-eight representative works are brilliant altarpieces, stained-glass windows, intricate tapestries, carved wood sculptures, delicate ivories, and captivating manuscript illuminations, all drawn from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum, one of the world's most comprehensive collections of medieval art. Iconic masterworks such as the Merode Altarpiece, the Unicorn Tapestries, and the Belles Heures of the duc de Berry are featured along with less familiar work. Descriptions of the individual pieces highlight the context in which they were made, conveying their visual and technical nuances as well as their broader symbolic meaning. With its accessible informative discussions and superb full-color illustrations, How to Read Medieval Art explores the iconographic themes of the period, making them clearly recognizable and opening vistas onto history and literature, faith and devotion.

Late Medieval Panel Paintings II

Late Medieval Panel Paintings II
Author: Nicholas Herman
Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781907372919

This book is an exemplary investigation of a series of, so far, poorly documented works that will prove of great interest to those in the field. Most of the 15th- or early 16th-century panel paintings presented here are northern European, a large number German, which have been neglected in English language studies. They are all almost unknown, and certainly none of them have been subjected to modern techniques of investigation - infrared, x-ray, micro-photography - until now.0Exhibition: Sam Fogg, New York.