Colour me rare
- POSTED ON: 2 Feb, 2023
- TOTAL VIEWS: 181 Views
- POSTED BY: Madhumitha Srinivasan
- ARTICLE POINTS: 150 Points
Acrylic paints, wax crayons, charcoal pencils, the blackest black…today, the different types of colours and mediums are just an art store away. But centuries ago, that wasn’t the case. Artists had to come up with innovative concoctions to create a colour of their desire.
Intrigued by this, historian Edward Forbes travelled around the world collecting unique and rare pigments used by artists, specifically to authenticate classical Italian paintings. Slowly, his collection grew to include more than 2,500 different specimens! Each one had its own distinct blend, origin, and raw material.
Here are a few pigments from his collection. Can you guess the colour derived from these main ingredients?