Trade in Artists’ Materials

An exploration of the supply, trade, and use of artists’ materials in Europe up to 1700, drawing on international, interdisciplinary research from historians, conservators, scientists, and economists. Using diverse sources-pharmacy price lists, customs records, inventories, and court accounts-alongside technical analysis, contributors trace the journeys of pigments, dyes, parchment, panels, and more. With detailed tables, maps, and case studies, the book offers vital insights into the availability, cost, and value of materials, shaping our understanding of historical artistic production and trade.

Where did artists buy their materials? Who prepared them? What did they cost? Where did they come from, and how? This volume draws together the international research in this new and rapidly developing field of interdisciplinary enquiry by historians, conservators, scientists, economic historians and historians of trade. The evidence concerning supply and distribution, availability, cost, quality and value of artists’ materials is fundamental for interpreting surviving objects in a wider sense. The authors draw on documentary material as diverse as pharmacy price lists, shipping and customs records, merchants’ handbooks, traders’ inventories and court account books. These sources are combined with technical evidence from works of art to explore the movements of pigments, dyes, panels, canvases, alabaster, parchment and paper from their point of origin to their purchase by the consumer in the major European centres of trade. The contributions range from specific case histories to more general views of the mechanisms and actuality of trading. Questions of terminology that have dogged the study of this topic are addressed and clarified, and new evidence concerning the nature of the materials traded and their identification is presented. Much of the detailed material discussed is provided in table form, and the book, which is generously illustrated, includes many maps illustrating trade routes. This volume is based on the papers for the international conference European Trade in Painters’ Materials to 1700 held at the Courtauld Institute and the National Gallery, London, with additional contributions, and is supported by International Academic Projects and the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Foreword

Jo Kirby, Susie Nash and Joanna Cannon

List of contributors

Introduction: the European trade in painters' materials to 1700

Catherine Reynolds

Lapis, indigo, woad: artists' materials in the context of international trade before 1700

Peter Spufford

Moving goods by sea and by land

Painters' materials and the northern international trade routes of late medieval Europe

Wendy R. Childs

Aspects of the European trade in oak boards to England 1200-1700

Ian Tyers

The trade in painters' materials in Norway in the Middle Ages. Part I: The 'silent' trade in painters' materials in Norway in the High Middle Ages

Per G. Norseng

The trade in painters' materials in Norway in the Middle Ages. Part II: Materials, techniques and trade from the twelfth century to the mid-fourteenth century

Unn Plahter

Shipping colour: valute, pigments, trade and Francesco di Marco Datini

Julia A. DeLancey

The supply of alabaster in northern and Mediterranean Europe in the later Middle Ages

Kim Woods

Couleurs for the northern courts

'Pour couleurs et autres choses prise de lui...': the supply, acquisition, cost and employment of painters' materials at the Burgundain Court, c. 1375-1419

Susie Nash

Suppliers of artists' materials to the Burgundian Court

Lorne Campbell

Parchment, pigments and ink

'Pro lazurio auricalco et alii correquisitis pro illuminacione': the Werden accounts and other sources on the trade in manuscript materials in the Lower Rhineland and Westfalia around 1500

Doris Oltrogge

Manuscript materials: cost and the market for parchment in Renaissance Italy

Anna Melograni

The market in Italy: prices, inventories and vendecolori

The market for painters' materials in Renaissance Florence

Susanne Kubersky-Piredda

'Memoria de colori che bisognino torre a vinetia': Venice as a centre for the purchase of painters' colours

Louisa C. Matthew and Barbara H. Berrie

The inventory of the Venetian vendecolori Jacopo de' Benedetti: the non-pigment materials

Roland Krischel

The materials of production in Italian Renaissance pottery: the inventory of Francesco di Luca, orciolaio

Steve Wharton

A century of pigment prices: seventeenth-century Italy

Richard E. Spear

Fairs and pharmacies in sixteenth-century Germany

The Leipzig trade fairs as a market for painters' materials in the sixteenth century

Gunnar Heydenreich

Pigmenta et Colores: the artist's palette in pharmacy price lists from Liegnitz (Silesia)

Andreas Burmester, Ursula Haller and Christoph Krekel

'Administrator of Painting': the purchase and distribution book of Wolf Pronner (1586-1590) as a source for the history of painting materials

Ursula Haller

Commerce in London and Antwerp in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Trade in painters' materials in sixteenth-century London

Jo Kirby

The colour of money: dealing in pigments in sixteenth-century Antwerp

Filip Vermeylen

'Eenen ramenant van verf ende pinselen': some aspects of the materials used by seventeenth-century cabinet painters in Antwerp

Ria Fabri

The London linen trade, 1509-1641, and the use of linen by painters in royal service

Maria Hayward

Production and problems: some case studies

In quest of a useful blue in early modern Spain

Zahira Veliz

Early modern blues: the smalt patent in context

Nicola Costaras

Frankfurt black: 'Tryginon appelantes, faex vini arefacta et cocta in fornace'

Ad Stijnman

Tracing white: a study of lead white pigments found in seventeenth-century paintings using high precision lead isotope abundance ratios

Daniel Fabian and Giuseppino Fortunato

Glossary

Compiled by Jo Kirby

Index,

Foreword

Jo Kirby, Susie Nash and Joanna Cannon

List of contributors

Introduction: the European trade in painters' materials to 1700

Catherine Reynolds

Lapis, indigo, woad: artists' materials in the context of international trade before 1700

Peter Spufford

Moving goods by sea and by land

Painters' materials and the northern international trade routes of late medieval Europe

Wendy R. Childs

Aspects of the European trade in oak boards to England 1200-1700

Ian Tyers

The trade in painters' materials in Norway in the Middle Ages. Part I: The 'silent' trade in painters' materials in Norway in the High Middle Ages

Per G. Norseng

The trade in painters' materials in Norway in the Middle Ages. Part II: Materials, techniques and trade from the twelfth century to the mid-fourteenth century

Unn Plahter

Shipping colour: valute, pigments, trade and Francesco di Marco Datini

Julia A. DeLancey

The supply of alabaster in northern and Mediterranean Europe in the later Middle Ages

Kim Woods

Couleurs for the northern courts

'Pour couleurs et autres choses prise de lui...': the supply, acquisition, cost and employment of painters' materials at the Burgundain Court, c. 1375-1419

Susie Nash

Suppliers of artists' materials to the Burgundian Court

Lorne Campbell

Parchment, pigments and ink

'Pro lazurio auricalco et alii correquisitis pro illuminacione': the Werden accounts and other sources on the trade in manuscript materials in the Lower Rhineland and Westfalia around 1500

Doris Oltrogge

Manuscript materials: cost and the market for parchment in Renaissance Italy

Anna Melograni

The market in Italy: prices, inventories and vendecolori

The market for painters' materials in Renaissance Florence

Susanne Kubersky-Piredda

'Memoria de colori che bisognino torre a vinetia': Venice as a centre for the purchase of painters' colours

Louisa C. Matthew and Barbara H. Berrie

The inventory of the Venetian vendecolori Jacopo de' Benedetti: the non-pigment materials

Roland Krischel

The materials of production in Italian Renaissance pottery: the inventory of Francesco di Luca, orciolaio

Steve Wharton

A century of pigment prices: seventeenth-century Italy

Richard E. Spear

Fairs and pharmacies in sixteenth-century Germany

The Leipzig trade fairs as a market for painters' materials in the sixteenth century

Gunnar Heydenreich

Pigmenta et Colores: the artist's palette in pharmacy price lists from Liegnitz (Silesia)

Andreas Burmester, Ursula Haller and Christoph Krekel

'Administrator of Painting': the purchase and distribution book of Wolf Pronner (1586-1590) as a source for the history of painting materials

Ursula Haller

Commerce in London and Antwerp in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Trade in painters' materials in sixteenth-century London

Jo Kirby

The colour of money: dealing in pigments in sixteenth-century Antwerp

Filip Vermeylen

'Eenen ramenant van verf ende pinselen': some aspects of the materials used by seventeenth-century cabinet painters in Antwerp

Ria Fabri

The London linen trade, 1509-1641, and the use of linen by painters in royal service

Maria Hayward

Production and problems: some case studies

In quest of a useful blue in early modern Spain

Zahira Véliz

Early modern blues: the smalt patent in context

Nicola Costaras

Frankfurt black: 'Tryginon appelantes, faex vini arefacta et cocta in fornace'

Ad Stijnman

Tracing white: a study of lead white pigments found in seventeenth-century paintings using high precision lead isotope abundance ratios

Daniel Fabian and Giuseppino Fortunato

Glossary

Compiled by Jo Kirby

Index

• Edited by Jo Kirby
• Edited by Susie Nash
• Edited by Joanna Cannon

"...the book is a treasure trove of information, a pleasure to read and a source of new ways of thinking about painting." The Art Newspaper 21(233) (March 2012) 58 "This exemplary editorial collaboration...introduces new evidence to consider in the investigation of art historical questions that relate to the materials used for making art...[This] publication is a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary field of technical art history." The Picture Restorer 39 (Autumn 2011) 49-53
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...the book is a treasure trove of information, a pleasure to read and a source of new ways of thinking about painting.

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This exemplary editorial collaboration...introduces new evidence to consider in the investigation of art historical questions that relate to the materials used for making art...[This] publication is a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary field of technical art history.

—