Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Medieval paint pigments were bright and clear, not shadowed or nu-

anced as later Renaissance painters preferred. Most pigments needed to

be crushed ﬁ nely before being mixed into the binding agent. The painter

ﬁ rst used a mortar and pestle, but the ﬁ nest grinding required a small slab

of marble with a block of marble rubbed across it. The crushed pigments

were mixed into a thick paste with water and stored either wet or dry. The

painter used a small amount of the pigment mixed into the medium (such

as egg yolk or glair) to make the amount of paint he would need for the

day’s work.

The most common white pigment came from white lead, which was

produced in a chemical reaction between lead, acidic fumes from vinegar,

and carbon dioxide from fermenting tanning bark or dung. The process

grew a white crust on the lead, which could be crushed into a stable, thick

white pigment. It was also poisonous.

Black pigments were natural. They could be from iron, as in most black

ink, or from soot rubbed off a lamp. Black pigments could also be made

from the carbon charcoal of grape vines or peach pits. Other charcoals

would do, but artists preferred these plant charcoals.

There are natural clays that make good paint pigments, as well as a few

red clays. They are high in iron and are called ochres. They were the origi-

nal prehistoric red paints of cave walls. Several red pigments were made

from crushed insects, and another common red was extracted from the

wood of the brazil tree. The most successful red tint, though, was both ar-

tiﬁ cial and poisonous. Vermillion red was made from a chemical reaction

between mercury and sulfur. Cinnabar is a red sulphide of mercury and oc-

curs naturally in Spain. In Roman times, chemists learned how to extract

mercury from cinnabar. Vermillion was the result of adding sulfur back to

the mercury; it was artiﬁ cial cinnabar.

The best blue pigment came from a mineral, azurite. It produced a paler

blue paint if it was crushed more ﬁ nely. When coarsely ground azurite was

mixed with size to produce blue paint, it required several coats, but the

ﬁ nished dried product had a sparkling quality like the original mineral. An

even better blue called ultramarine came from crushed lapis lazuli, a min-

eral found in Persia, but ultramarine paint was rarely used, and only for the

most expensive items, where the goal was to show off conspicuous wealth.

Most blue tints came from plants. The best came from indigo, a plant

imported from India, but Europe had a similar dye plant called woad. Both

plants produced a blue dye as sap. Woad had also soaked up potassium, and

if craftsmen burned woad roots, they could get very high-quality potassium

ash to use for making lye. Woad also ruined the soil it grew in by draw-

ing the potassium out, and medieval farmers did not have good methods

for replacing it. Woad leaves and indigo leaves were processed similarly for

their pigment. Dried and crushed, they were fermented in water until foam

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collected on top; this was skimmed and dried to make the concentrated

pigment. The water itself could be used to dye cloth. Another common

plant called the turnsole had seeds that produced a strong juice. It could

dye pieces of cloth red, purple, or blue, depending on what else was mixed

with it, and the pieces of cloth served as storage for the pigment. The pieces

of cloth were called clothlets, and they could quickly stain water or glair

into an active, bright paint.

The advent of artiﬁ cial dyes brought copper blue. Although copper is

naturally green, with the addition of ammonia (easily obtained from urine),

it turns blue. The color became chemically stable if lime was added, and

this chemistry process produced a cheap, bright blue that became an all-

purpose paint for walls, wood, and books.

Yellow could be made in many different ways. Some clays produced yel-

low ochres, particularly if they contained limonite. Yellow ochre paints were

used mostly for wall murals. Bile from the livers of ﬁ sh or turtles also pro-

duced yellow pigment. Saffron, the powdered stigma of the crocus ﬂ ower,

was an important spice in cooking as well as a yellow pigment. Unripe

buckthorn berries gave yellow pigment, as did an herb called weld, which

was often used in dyeing.

Some chemical processes also made yellow pigments. White lead, when

roasted slowly, turned yellow and then orange. A kind of false-gold mineral

called orpiment created a good yellow pigment, but it was not compatible

with other pigments like verdigris and white lead. They could not be used

where they would overlap or touch because the chemicals reacted and de-

stroyed the colors. Manuscript painters used a chemical pigment known as

mosaic gold; it was a tin sulphide that was difﬁ cult to make and involved

tin, mercury, sulphur, and sal ammoniac.

Some clays produce a dull green pigment useful for scenery on large wall

paintings. A mineral called malachite is often found with azurite, and, when

it was crushed, it produced a green pigment that was used in the same way

as azurite blue.

A chemical process created the most common green pigment. Copper

oxide was made by exposing a sheet of copper to the acidic fumes of vin-

egar, and the chemical reaction created a green crust on the copper. This

green pigment was called verdigris. Verdigris was not a stable chemical,

and, unless the perfect binding agent was used, it would turn dark with

time. Medieval painters were aware of this, but the green lasted reasonably

well for several centuries, so they did not know how severe the darkening

would eventually be. Verdigris green appears on many wall paintings, where

it is now brown or black. In book illustration, it lasted better. It was usually

dissolved in wine and made reasonably good paint.

Saffron yellow was often mixed with verdigris, but white lead paint was

chemically incompatible with it. Several plants provided good greens that

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were compatible for mixing with white lead. Sap green and iris green were

made from the juice of the ripe buckthorn seed and the iris ﬂ ower. The iris

ﬂ ower gives a purple juice when it is squeezed, but this juice turns green

when alum is added. Some other ﬂ owers and leaves, such as nightshade,

also made green pigment. Finally, blue pigments with saffron added made

green.

Purple in Roman times came from the whelk, a shellﬁ sh that produces

purple dye. Medieval purples probably did not come directly from shell-

ﬁ sh because the whelk dyes were so expensive. They were made from a

plant called turnsole or from a type of lichen. Or, simplest of all, they were

blended from red and blue, as long as the chemicals in the red and blue

were compatible.

Gold and silver were used directly in painting. Gold was powdered and

mixed with a medium like glair, but gold does not grind to powder easily.

It ﬁ rst has to be turned into an alloy, using another metal like copper or

mercury, in order to overcome gold’s natural property of holding together.

Gold can be beaten into a very ﬁ ne sheet or wire and will not become

brittle, so it did not grind, either. Silver was easier to grind, and it could

be mixed into the binding agent like another pigment. Painters sometimes

tried to mix powdered silver with yellow saffron powder so it would look

like gold.

While gold was difﬁ cult to crush for paint, it could be beaten into very

thin sheets of gold, called gold leaf, and glued to parchment or wood.

Gold leaf had to be burnished so that it would shine, and the most likely

burnishing tool was a tooth mounted on a wooden handle. Sometimes col-

ored paint was put onto the gold leaf so that the dry paint could be scraped

away in places to allow the gold to shine through. This technique is called

sgrafﬁ to.

When an artist prepared wood as a surface to paint, he began by sand-

ing it carefully. In Germany and France, hardwoods like oak were available,

and they required only a surface layer of chalk to be prepared for painting.

In Italy, only softer woods were available, so the artist covered them with

a layer of plaster called gesso. Gesso was made of chalk or gypsum mixed

with glue. When it dried, it could be polished into a perfectly hard, smooth

surface that took paint well. Areas requiring gold leaf ﬁ rst received a layer of

red clay, and then the gold was painted onto the clay and burnished. Paint

might go over the gold leaf for a sgrafﬁ to technique. This was especially

used on wooden altarpieces because it allowed gold stars or golden rays to

shine out from a dark surface.

For general work with wood panels and frames, artists used glue, rather

than nails. One common artists’ glue was made from cheese and lime. The

cheese was soaked and crushed in water, and powered lime was mixed in.

The glue was very strong and has lasted many centuries. Another kind of

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glue was made from soaking and boiling animal skin and cartilage until they

dissolved. Stockﬁ sh, too, could be made into ﬁ sh glue this way.

If a wall was to be painted, it was ﬁ rst carefully plastered to make the sur-

face very ﬁ ne and smooth, rather than painting directly on stone or brick.

Sometimes a coat of tar went ﬁ rst, to waterproof the wall. Wall painting in

Northern Europe was generally done on a dry surface. It was nearly always

indoors. Many walls of castles and chapels had murals showing scenes from

the Bible, the lives of saints, or daily life. The scenes were large, often nearly

life-size. Hunting in a forest was a common motif.

Medieval wall painters also decorated some portions of walls with drap-

ery, as though the wall were curtained. After 1300, there was a fashion to

cover walls with “diaper,” an allover pattern of diamonds similar to modern

wallpaper patterns. To keep the designs even, painters used stencils, often

cut from thin sheets of lead.

Fresco painting developed in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries

and was used into the Renaissance. It was a cheap substitute for Byzantine-

like glass tile mosaics and woven tapestry wall hangings. A fresco painter

started at the top of a wall. He put a layer of fresh rough plaster on the wall

and sketched the lines of what he was going to paint. Over this, he put a

thin coat of ﬁ ne plaster so that the lines still showed through. He only plas-

tered as much as he could paint in one day before the plaster dried. Fresco

painting depended on the weather, which had to be just right so that the

plaster dried on time—not too quickly or too slowly.

Fresco painting is the best-known wall

technique, but it was mostly used in

Italy at the end of the Middle Ages.

The artist tinted fresh plaster, working

quickly and only applying as much

plaster as he could paint before it

dried. Fresco colors have proven very

durable over the centuries, especially

when the work was not exposed to the

weather. Most other wall painting

techniques have suffered chemical

changes in their colors, but fresco tints

may be as bright as when they were

ﬁ rst applied. (Claudio Giovanni

Colombo/iStockphoto)

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554

The fresco artist painted with tints that bound directly with the gypsum

in the plaster; they were not mixed with the binding agents used in other

painting techniques, such as egg or gum arabic. Some tints, such as lapis

lazuli blue, had to be put onto dry plaster. Fresco painting did not take de-

tails well, so early frescos were touched up with egg tempera paint. Some

frescos had only the backgrounds put onto the wet plaster, while the rest

was painted in tempera. Experiments with oil painting on plaster showed

that it disintegrated over time, and traditional fresco was better. The tem-

pera details held up better but were also prone to ﬂ aking off over the cen-

turies.

See also: Books, Gold and Silver, Records, Sculpture.

Further Reading

Binski, Paul. Painters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

Holcomb, Melanie. Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages. New York:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.

Nees, Lawrence. Early Medieval Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Petzold, Andreas. Romanesque Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.

Rosewell, Roger. Medieval Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches. Wood-

bridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2008.

Stoksad, Marilyn. Medieval Art. New York: Westview Press, 2004.

Thompson, Daniel V. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. New

York: Dover Publications, 1956.

Toman, Rolf, ed. Gothic: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting. Cologne, Germany:

Ullmann and Konemann, 2007.

Toman, Rolf, ed. Romanesque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting. Cologne, Ger-

many: Ullmann and Konemann, 2004.

Wolf, Norbert. Giotto di Bondone, 1267–1337. Cologne, Germany: Taschen,

2006.

Parchment and Paper

Parchment was the standard writing material for most of the Middle Ages.

It was simply leather, treated specially to make it into a smooth, white sur-

face. Paper was a new invention brought from Asia during the 13th cen-

tury. Paper was made by mixing plant ﬁ bers with water and spreading the

mixture over a screen or a mold. The ﬁ bers dried, resulting in a sheet of

paper. The results were similar, but the technologies were very different

and required radically different manufacturing processes.

Parchment could be made from the skins of goats, sheep, cows, or other

animals. Vellum was a very ﬁ ne, expensive parchment made from the skins

of young animals (calves, lambs, or kids). Because of their larger size, cows

provided the materials for larger sheets of vellum used for large books such

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555

as large Bibles or choir books. Fatty animals provided poorer quality parch-

ment. Apart from questions of size, different regions used primarily the ani-

mals they naturally raised. Parchment making kept pace with butchering,

recycling some portion of the skins.

Fresh skins had to go straight to the parchment maker, where they were

soaked in water so that blood and fat could be scraped off. Then the clean

skins were soaked for a few days in a solution of lime (calcium oxide) and

water. This loosened the hair so it could be rubbed off easily, and it drew

out some of the fat in the skin. The wet skin was stretched on a large hoop.

Workers used curved blades to scrap the hides smooth. They also rubbed

them with substances to treat the surface: ashes and lime to draw out fat

and alum to harden it. Additionally, the surface of the drying parchment

was sanded smooth with a pumice stone. Where pumice was not available,

some parchment makers baked ground glass into bread and used that to

rub the skins.

When the skins were fully scraped, sanded, and dried, they could be re-

moved from the hoops. They were cut to size, usually for books. Most

parchment required a last treatment of chalk or pumice dust. For some

purposes, it was painted with a thin coating of glue or with coats of white

Parchment took several days to prepare, from a fresh animal hide to smooth, white,

polished vellum. It had to be stretched and scraped while wet. (Musee Conde,

Chantilly, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)

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paint. Parchment could also be dyed blue, purple, green, or other colors.

Gold paint stood out well against dark colors.

The technology for making paper was developed in China. The use of

paper moved westward to Europe by two routes: through North Africa

and into Spain and through Central Asia along the Silk Road. Samarkand,

which is located along the Silk Road, became a center of papermaking be-

cause of its good crops of ﬂ ax.

The increased paper production of the late Middle Ages was dependent

not only on gaining paper technology from China, but also on the avail-

ability of linen rags. Chinese paper had used mulberry tree bark, which was

unavailable in Europe. Until technological and agricultural advances made

linen towels, shirts, and sheets common, there were not enough materials

to make paper in Europe. Worn-out linen could be bought and shredded

for paper; the linen rags were ﬁ rst torn up, soaked, shredded, and beaten.

Then the linen pulp was spread into a mold, pressed, and dried. Dry sheets

were sanded with a stone and then dipped into sizing made of gelatin

and alum.

The ﬁ rst water-powered paper mills were in Muslim Spain because the

technology came from Baghdad during the 11th and 12th

centuries. The

ﬁ rst paper mill in Europe was established in 1270 in Fabriano, Italy, and

the ﬁ rst watermarks were used in Italy in 1282. Water-powered paper mill

technology reached Northern Europe during the remaining medieval cen-

turies, arriving in England in the 15th century.

Europe’s acceptance of paper was slow. Parchment was easily available,

and there was little demand for paper because few people could read. Also,

the church disapproved of paper because of its Muslim origin, and laws for-

bade the use of paper for public documents. In 1221, Emperor Frederick II

declared that documents written on paper had no validity in law.

But as paper became less expensive than parchment, handmade books

were easier to create and depended only on the number of scribes who

could be employed. Commercial stationers contracted with scribes to make

copies of books for universities. The availability of paper books was a step

toward the invention of a mass-printing technology, and the role of paper

changed dramatically with the invention of printing.

In the ﬁ rst step in manufacturing paper, the ﬁ brous material was pre-

pared in a vat using linen rags soaked in water that was kept warm and

stirred with a pole. For higher-quality paper, silk rags were used, and the

rags were cut by hand, rather than by machine. The paper mold was a wire

screen in a wooden frame, topped with a second, removable screen that

determined the size of the sheet of paper. This screen was called a deckle,

from the German word for “cover.”

The vatman dipped the mold vertically into to the ﬁ brous liquid and

then laid it horizontally. A worker shook the pulp on the screen, forward

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557

and backward and then side to side, to mat the ﬁ bers together to make

stronger paper. Then the deckle was removed.

After adequate draining, the mold was turned face down on a piece of

wool felt. The mold was lifted off, the paper clung to the wool, another felt

was laid on top, another sheet of pulp was added, and so on. The whole

pile, which might be as tall as two feet high, was put into a screw press to

squeeze out as much water as possible, lowering the height of the stack to

about six inches. For ﬁ ner paper, the sheets were pressed a second time.

The felts were then reused for the next stack.

The paper then was dried over horsehair cords in groups of four or ﬁ ve

sheets; grouping the sheets helped the paper dry fairly ﬂ at. Paper that was

to be used for writing was dipped in a starchy liquid (a sizing made of animal-

or vegetable-based glue) and again pressed and dried.

The forms used for drying left a pattern in the paper. The mill at Fab-

riano developed the watermark, a design that identiﬁ ed a speciﬁ c mill. This

watermark design was made of ﬁ ne wires so the design was pressed into

the ﬁ nished paper. Sometimes the paper mill also used a heavier cord that

would leave a slight indentation along the margin of the paper to show

where the writing should stop.

See also: Books, Cloth, Pens and Ink, Printing.