Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 1. Jan Baptiste Collaert, Color Olivi, 1566- 1628. After Joharll1es Stradanus. Courtesy of
the Rij"ksmuseum-Stichting, Amsterdam.
entific research methods, research into historic techniques has now come to
play a central part in research on authenticity and workshop practice, as well
as in conservation and restoration.
Research into historic techniques has made considerable progress in these
areas during recent decades, so it now makes sense for current applications
and future research to turn renewed attention to the interrelation between
technique and style. This interrelation is examined here through the study of
developments affecting the painter's palette.
Palettes
One of the most fascinating and complete documents concerning the history
of the art of oil painting is a well-known engraving by Jan Baptist Collaert,
after Stradanus, which dates from the end of the sixteenth century (Fig. 1).
This engraving gives a highly detailed picture of an idealized painter's studio:
the master is working on a history piece, while an assistant is occupied with
painting a portrait. Two other assistants are grinding and preparing colors.
The engraving shows countless details that provide valuable hints about dayto-day
practice in the late-sixteenth-century painter's studio. In the fo reground,
three boy apprentices can be seen; the smallest is practicing the
rudiments of drawing, and the more advanced apprentice on the left is drawing
from plaster casts.
For our present purposes, we are solely concerned with the apron-clad apprentice
standing next to the master. He is setting out a palette of small shells,
presumably containing colors prepared by the assistants, and holds a palette
similar to that of the master. As it will soon be made clear, the arrangement
of the master's palette with so few colors is far from arbitrary. Like so many
other details, this must be regarded as a faithful representation of sixteenthcentury
practice. The youth in the foreground has applied a limited number
of colors to the palette in his hand. As on his master's palette, they are spread
out over the surface of the palette.
There are generally no written sources to be fo und on the most routine
activities of the painter's studio through history. Incidental evidence on certain
aspects of painterly practice can be gleaned from documents, but we have to
live with the fact that such sources are extremely sporadic in both time and
place. In the present case, a late-seventeenth-century Italian text can be shown
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