Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract
It is argued here that painters of the
Baroque adhered to the die-hard tradition
of loading their palettes with
a limited number of tints, suitable
only for painting the passage they
planned to finish in that stage of the
work. Support for this proposition
comes from various directions: written
sources, studio representations,
and scientific research generated by
different methods. An example of a
specific studio practice is used to
demonstrate the much discussed interrelation
of technique and style.
Reflections on the Relation between Te chnique
and Style: The Use of the Palette by the
Seventeenth-Century Painter
Ernst van de Wetering
Kunsthistorisch Instituut
Herengracht 286
1016 BX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Introduction
In the Vitae, as is widely known, Giorgio Vasari attempted to describe the
development of Italian art from Giotto onward as a process of continuous
progress culminating in the work of Michelangelo. The idea that art changes
because better solutions appear was certainly not restricted to Vasari. While
stylistic developments in Western art were viewed as a matter of progress, it
was inevitable that the characteristics of earlier styles would be explained in
relation to problems that had meanwhile been solved. This could apply to
the invention of perspective and to the invention of oil painting-which,
according to Vasari, "softens and sweetens the colors and renders them more
delicate and more easily blended than do the other mediums" (1). Finally, the
development of style can be applied within oil painting to the development
of the technique fo r achieving a "'glowing" incarnate, as Karel van Mander
termed it, by means of an underpainting in vermilion that "glows more
fleshy" (2).
Viewed thus, there can be said to exist a clear relation between style and
technique. During the nineteenth century, however, this was a hotly debated
issue among art theorists. Some of these, especially writers on architecture
such as Gottfried Semper (1803-1 879) and Viol1et-le-Duc (1814-1 879),
aimed to demonstrate a fu ndamental interrelation of style and technique in
the arts (3). Twentieth-century developments, such as the theories underlying
the Bauhaus, continued to build on the same ideas.
Not everyone agrees that style and technique are interrelated. A parallel
stream of art history adheres to the idea, current since the Romantic period,
that every fo rm of art had its own fo rmal legitimacy. In this way of thinking,
it was not necessary to explain styles in terms of technical limitations and
possibilities. This line of thought culminated in the concept of Kunstwollen,
originated by Alois Riegl (1858-1 905), which was seen as the manifestation
of an "urge to fo rm," independent of the restrictive influence of such factors
as function, materials, and technique. All the same, Riegl did not deny the
influence of technique. He believed, however, that Kunstwollen overcame the
technical limitations. Technical frontiers, considered by Semper to play a positive
part in the creative process, constituted in Riegl's view a "coefficient of
friction" within the Gesamtprodukt of Kunstwollen (4).
It could be argued that Riegl's notion of Kunstwollen was partly responsible
for the fact that "style" has so long remained one of the main domains of art
historical research, with art historians such as Wollflin and Focillon being
prominent representatives of this direction. It is worth noting here that the
stylistics ofWollflin were dominated by an outlook in which the autonomous
or even abstract qualities of the visual vocabulary took priority over the
pictorial means employed to achieve a convincing representation of reality.
Since Wollflin's times, research into artistic techniques has become more and
more detached from stylistic considerations. Owing to the shift towards sci-
This article was previously published, in a different form, in Oud Holland 107: 1, 1993,
137-51; and in KM, vakil'!for111atie voor beeldende Kunstenaars en res fa rato ren, Fall 1994,
28-31; reprinted, with changes, by permission of the author.
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice