Technical Research
Last updated
Lead White
Stols-Witlox, Maartje. “Historical Recipes for Preparatory Layers for Oil Paintings in Manuals, Manuscripts and Handbooks in North West Europe, 1550–1900: Analysis and Reconstructions.” Vol. 1. PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2014.
Lead white is considered to have added to the ground’s luminosity, which would have been important in the Early Flemish manner of painting that uses transparent glazes and is described as having exploited the light reflecting properties of whitish preparatory layers.
In an oil binder, lead white not only provides a base tone, but also acts as a siccative, a fact painters are aware of from very early on, as demonstrated in a canvas ground recipe by Vasari (1550), who writes: ‘but first it is convenient to prepare a layer of pigments with siccative properties, such as lead white, ‘giallolino’, and ‘earth for bells’.160
The function of lead white in preparatory layers is to provide colour and bulk, and use is also made of its siccative properties.
Underdrawing Beneath Preparatory Layers
Cranach — Concealing Rejected Details
Heydenreich, Gunnar. Lucas Cranach the Elder: Painting Materials, Techniques and Workshop Practice. Amsterdam University Press, 2007.
In works of the first decades of the sixteenth century that have been examined for this study, the imprimatura covers the underdrawing, altering its appearance. On the Altarpiece with the Martyrdom of St Catherine (1506) a layer of lead white conceals details of form that had been drawn and then rejected.
Cranach — Softening the Drawing into Undermodelling
Heydenreich, Gunnar. Lucas Cranach the Elder: Painting Materials, Techniques and Workshop Practice. Amsterdam University Press, 2007.
The white imprimatura on top of the drawing smoothes out washes, some strokes of hatching, and the outlines, resulting in a grisaille-like undermodelling.
Leonardo — Keeping the Drawing Visible as a Painting Guide
Keith, Larry, Ashok Roy, Rachel Morrison, and Peter Schade. “Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks: Treatment, Technique and Display.” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 32 (2011): 32–56.
This design was then partially concealed with the light grey oil-based priming (imprimitura) containing lead white and a little carbon black.
The first, lower, underdrawing would have remained visible through the thin veil of the initial greyish imprimitura; this was a standard method of partially concealing an underdrawing so that its outlines and shading could be followed in the painting stage, but would not be visible in the finished picture.
Northern Practice — Preserving Visibility Beneath a Translucent Layer
Wadum, Jørgen. “Historical Overview of Panel-Making Techniques in the Northern Countries.” In The Structural Conservation of Panel Paintings: Proceedings of a Symposium at the J. Paul Getty Museum, 24–28 April 1995, edited by Kathleen Dardes and Andrea Rothe, 149–77. Getty Conservation Institute, 1998.
The underdrawing would be made directly onto the thin white ground, on top of which a translucent insulating layer, the primuersel, would be placed. This primuersel would leave the drawing visible for further development in the painting process.
Here, Wadum identifies the underlying ground as white; this passage does not specify white pigment in the primuersel itself.
Corrections and Repeated Overpainting
Solomon, Solomon J. The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing. Dover Publications, 2012.
... the superstition that because of the opacity of pigments corrections can be ventured upon without due preparation.
.. no sense of freshness can be preserved after three, or at the utmost four, coats of a similar tint have been laid solidly over each other on the canvas.
Repeated covering of dark paint will lead to muddiness.
.. you may paint two or three times only over the lights without danger of losing freshness