Pigment Analysis in Paintings: Titian, Velazquez, Rembrandt

I always enjoy have some idea of the kinds of pigments used to create a certain color, especially if multiple layers are involved.  I stumbled upon a website that has some nice presentations on this very topic.  As an example, Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne.

Track the Lives of the Old Masters

There is a very clever new website called eVasari: you can trace the timeline, travels and pictures of many different artists… even several together. Attached is a search I did that shows how the lifetimes of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Titian overlap. Really cool.

You can find it here.

The Pigment Compendium on Google Books

If you are doing research on unfamiliar names of pigments, then this is the resource you need:

The Pigment Compendium by Nicholas Eastuagh, Valentine Walsh, Tracey Chaplin and Ruth Siddall.

A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings Online

the-rembrandt-databaseFor those familiar with Ernst van de Wetering’s Rembrandt – The Painter at Work and the Rembrandt Research Project, you may also be aware of the six-part series of Rembrandt books entitled A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings.

If you’re not interested in paying the going rate for an actual volume (Volume I is currently selling for around $1,200 on Amazon), then there is reason to rejoice:

The first five volumes of the Corpus are available as free digital downloads on a website launched in 2012 called The Rembrandt Database.

I only just found it yesterday, so it seems a worthy cause to help spread the word.