Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Tingry, in 1830, gives a recipe for "Another Cremnitz White," which he
describes as a beautiful pearly white, too expensive for house painting, but
"it would, no doubt, be attended with great advantage in painting pictures"
(13). This white was a mixture of tin white, one-fourth part zinc white and
one-eighth part white clay separated from Briancon white.
Linton describes tin white (oxide of tin) as, "too feeble in body ... to be of
any service to the oil painter . .. " (14). He does, however, add that it may be
unaffected by "injurious gases." Field also thinks the pigment to be poor,
writing that it "dries badly and has almost no body in oil or in water, it is
the basis of the best white in enamel painting" (15). In 1951, Mayer merely
states that it is not a paint pigment at all (16).
Figure 1. Tin white pigment, details on a
sixteenth-century Jain miniature. Photograph
by Paul Robins (Photo Studio), courtesy of
the Victoria & Albert Museum (I. S.84-
1963 1 15).
Tin white, therefore, has two main uses: as an opacifier in glass, enamel, and
ceramic glazes from the ninth to twentieth centuries; and as a possible pigment
in manuscripts and miniatures from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.
Even in the short review given here, three quite different recipes for
its preparation are given from the following eras: (1) circa 1500, England, tin
oxide; (2) circa 1580, Italy, white glass powder opacified with tin oxide; and
(3) circa 1800, England, a mixture of tin oxide, zinc oxide, and white clay.
During a research program in the laboratory of the Victoria & Albert Museum,
methods for nondestructive identification of the pigments on Indian
miniatures were studied (17). Incident light microscopy, energy-dispersive x­
ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectroscopy, and ultraviolet and infrared color
reversal photography were used.
Several Jain miniatures were examined; these small, jewel-like, utterly distinctive
paintings from Western India were of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The areas of white paint were frequently restricted to details of textiles
and jewelry (Figs. 1 , 2). Two of the miniatures had tin present as the major
constituent in areas of white pigment. Because red lake and, in one case, gold
leaf were beneath the white, this was regarded as interesting but not conclusive
of tin white being present.
Tin was then fo und on a third Jain miniature, possibly dating from the fifteenth
century, with carbon black and verdigris in the same area. Three more
paintings were chosen from the same manuscript as one of those examined
earlier, as it was possible to focus on areas with no other pigment or only
gold leaf. In all three, tin was the major constituent (Fig. 3) . It is possible,
Figure 2. Tin white pigment, details on a
sixteenth-century Jain miniature. Photograph
by Paul Robins (Photo Studio), courtesy of
the Victoria & Albert Museum (I. S. 46-
19591 26).
500
450
400
350
Sn
300
250
200
Sn
Sn
Au
Au
150
Sn
100
50
Au
5
10
15
20
KeV
25
30
35
40
Figure 3. EDXRF spectrum of tin white pigment on a sixteenth-century Jain miniature. Spectrum
prepared by David Ford, Science Group, Victoria & Albert Museum (1. 5.46-19591 49).
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