The red that lasts hundreds of years without fading, but it’s a highly toxic salt of mercury. Used in European paintings from the Romans to the late 19th century.
di Cione
Used by all the masters from about 1300, including Leonardo da Vinci, Veronese, Rubens and Rembrandt, this pigment was lost in the early 18th century and wasn’t rediscovered until 1940.
Before 1700, the myth of Vertumnus and Pomona was popular, as was Mary Magdalene’s mistaking of the resurrected Christ as a gardener.
In their heyday, worked elaborately in gold leaf, but lost with the realism of the Renaissance. Revived by the Pre-Raphaelites, and rarely used for secular figures.
Although conflated with another Mary, she features in her own right in paintings of the Deposition, as Myrrhbearer, and Noli me tangere.
The other half of the festival of Easter has been painted far less. Yet without Resurrection, Easter and all Christian belief would be worthless.
Lead-tin yellow features in many paintings of the Old Masters, until about 1750. It was then replaced and forgotten until 1940. Examples in major masterpieces from Rembrandt, da Vinci, Vermeer, and others.
What turns statues and copper roofs blue-green? ‘Copper rust’, the basis of the intense green pigment Verdigris, used by all the Masters.
Used since Roman times, it was common in the dress of saints. Highly toxic, it was progressively replaced by cadmium red in the late 19th century.
The Eclectic Light Company 