SHADES OF BLUE

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blue

Gerrit Albertson
Art Conservation – Graduate Student
HIROX RH-2000 Digital Microscope

This is a photomicrograph of the paint layers on a 17th century Dutch painting. Here at 350x magnification you can see the artist used two different blues: an indigo dye (or indigotin) is mixed into an oil binder and layered on top of lead white, or basic lead carbonate. At the bottom distinct pigment particles of ultramarine are visible. This extremely expensive pigment was made from the mineral lapis lazuli and was often imported from Afghanistan.

Skills

Posted on

January 9, 2019