Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 1. Workshop of Jan Bruegel, Noah's Ark. Panel, 65. 4 X 94.5 em. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (3 7. 1998).
space for the figures was left in reserve as the landscape was painted. Some
landscape specialists collaborated with figure painters, in which case the figures
would be painted over a fully completed landscape. Other workshops
divided up production in a sort of assembly line, with junior associates filling
in minor details.
The painting materials in the Flemish mannerist group, while not unusual,
were used in ways that enhanced the clear colors. Typically, a light-colored,
opaque ground maintained the luminous tonalities of the paint, but rarely is
the ground itself visible in the final image. Instead, the three dominant zones
of the composition were laid out with broad areas of underpaint: warm brown
in the foreground, soft green in the middle zone, and light blue in the distance.
The final image was worked up over these base colors. Working from the
back of the composition to the foreground, each zone was painted in turn
in a limited range of colors harmonizing with that of the underpaint.
A painting of Noah 's Ark at the Walters Art Gallery was produced by the
workshop of Jan Bruegel (Fig. 1) (7, 8). In this painting, the techniques described
above were adapted for team production in a workshop setting. As
shown in a paint cross section from high in the central group of trees, a thick
white chalk ground was sealed and lightly toned by a translucent imprimatura
(layers 1 and 2) (Plate 31) (9). Over the preparation and underdrawing, the
sky was laid in first, followed by a base color loosely brushed for each particular
area of the composition; the upper two layers of the cross section show
the sky (layer 3), which extends under the foliage base tone in the upper part
of the trees, and the clear green underpaint (layer 4) of the lightest passage
of the central group of trees. A skilled painter painted the main foliage elements
and the figures and animals, which are the primary subjects of the
painting, onto the broad areas of underpaint. Only after these major elements
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