Red pigments are materials, usually made from minerals, used to create the red colors in painting and other arts. The color of red and other pigments is determined by the way it absorbs certain parts of the spectrum of visible light and reflects the others. The brilliant opaque red of vermillion, for example, results because vermillion reflects the major part of red light, but absorbs the blue, green and yellow parts of white light.[1]
Red pigments historically were often made from iron oxides, such as hematite. These pigments have been found in cave paintings in France dating to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC. The bright scarlet color, vermilion, was made by pulverizing the mineral cinnabar. A synthetic Vermilion was created in the 9th century with a compound of mercury and sulfur. century, with a mixture of the great majority of red pigments are made artificially, rather than taken from nature.[2]
More recently, pigments were created from dyestuffs from mineral and animal sources, The best known is cochineal, made from insects. Red Lake pigments are famous for their translucency. To paint richly-closed red fabrics, Medieval painters often used several layers of translucent lake colors over a base of lake mixed with lead white or vermillion.[3]
Red Ochre
Red ochre takes its reddish colour from the mineral hematite, which is an anhydrous iron oxide, and the main ingredient of rust. It was one of the earliest pigments used by man. Hand prints made by using red ochre have been found in the Pech Merle cave in Southern France. They date to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC.
The mineral hematite, a form of iron oxide, is the primnary ingredient of red ochre pigment,
Prehistoric negative hand print in red ochre from Pech Merle Cave in Le Lot, France
The Virgin with Saint Anne, by Masolino (1434–1425)
"Young man in a scarlet turban" by Masaccio (between 1425 and 1427)
Vermilion
Vermilion is a very ancient red-orange pigment, made by pulverizing the mineral cinnabar. Its defect is that it is liable to darken with age, and sometimes develops a purple-red surface sheen, as seen in some paintings by Paolo Uccello, including the bridles of the horses depicts in "The Battle of San Romano" .[4]
Vermilion also has a role in Indian culture. Hindu women wear a dab of vermilion on their forehead to indicate they are married.
"The battle of San Romano", by Paolo Uccello *1439-1440)
Sindoor, a vermilion pigment called Sindoor is worn by Indian women at the hairline of their foreheads to indicate they are married
Cadmium red
Cadmium red is a byproduct of zinc ore. About half of the cadmium produced in the world has been used used for making batteries for automobiles, and a large part of the other half is used for making a family of bright pigments, including cadmium orange and cadmium yellow. It is known for maintaining its brightness.[5]
Alizarin crimson is a vivid red pigment, inclined slightly toward purple, which was most widely used as a dye. It came from the Rubia tinctorum plant, commonly known as Madder. It has been found on fabrics in ancient Egyptian tombs, and its production in Europe was encouraged by Charlemagne for the early European textile industry.
"A Lady and Two Gentlemen"" by Johannes Vermeer used Alizarin crimson for dramatic effect
Chinese Red
Chinese red, a bright red color also known as Han Red for the Han dynasty. It had the same primary ingredient as the western color vermilion.[citation needed] It was used in China to color murals, architecture, clothing, and especially lacquerware. The Empress of China traveled in a red carriages, and wore red costumes. In the Ming dynasty, (1368-1644), the color was featured in all official ceremonies, including sacrificial offerings, weddings, and departures of expeditions.[6]
Red lac, also called red lake, crimson lake or carmine lake, was an important red pigment in Renaissance and Baroque art. Since it was translucent, thin layers of red lac were built up or glazed over a more opaque, dark color to create a particularly deep and vivid color.
Unlike vermilion or red ochre, made from minerals, red lake pigments are made by mixing organic dyes, made from insects or plants, with white chalk or alum. Red lac was made from the gum lac, the dark red resinous substance secreted by various scale insects, particularly the Laccifer lacca from India.[7]Carmine lake was made from the cochineal insect from Central and South America, Kermes lake came from a different scale insect, kermes vermilio, which thrived on oak trees around the Mediterranean. Other red lakes were made from the rose madder plant and from the brazilwood tree.
Red lake pigments were an important part of the palette of 16th-century Venetian painters, particularly Titian, but they were used in all periods.[8] Since the red lakes were made from organic dyes, they tended to be fugitive, becoming unstable and fading when exposed to sunlight.
Cochineal is a deep purplish-red color, made from insects, which is also used as a dye and to color food products.[9]Cochineal was produced by the Incas to dye cotton from 700 BC. It was also used as a cosmetic and a pigment. The insects were raised on large plantations before the arrival of the Spanish. Three hundred kilos of insects could be raised on each hectare of the plantation. The Spanish conquerors appreciated the value of the color and arranged the export of hundreds of tons to Europe. The production of cochineal was also introduced in the Canary Islands and in Poland. It largely disappeared after the invention of synthetic dyes and pigments, but has resumed more recently because of the lack of toxicity and environmental benefits of the product.[10]
A common characteristic of Red Lake pigments is their translucency. especially in oil painting. Painters often created more vivid colors by adding layers of red lakes over less transparent underfloors, particularly painting over lake colors mixed with lead white or vermilion. A weakness of lake pigments is their tendency to fade because of the action of light.[11]
Titian used glazes of red lake to create the vivid crimson of the robes in The Vendramin Family Venerating a Relic of the True Cross, completed 1550–60 (detail).
"Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" by Vermeer, used red lake pigments.(1654–1656)
Minium
Minium is a bright orange-red pigment that was often used in the Middle Ages for Illuminated manuscripts. It was made by roasting white lead pigment.[12]
Solid minium
A sample of minium pigment, made by roasting white lead pigment
The Códice del Escorial (1272–1284) from Spain, used minium pigment for red letters and illustrations
Martyrdom of St Mark the Evangelist. Paris, 1443-1445 (CBL W 082, f.270r)
↑ Neufeldt, V.; Guralnik, D. B., eds. (1988). Webster's New World dictionary of American English (3rd collegeed.). Cleveland: Webster's New World. ISBN978-0-13-192659-2. OCLC36197258.
Pastoureau, Michel (2016). Rouge: Histoire d'une couleur (in French). Paris: Éditions du Seuil. ISBN978-2-7578-7820-0.
Varichon, Anne (2005). Couleurs: pigments et teintures dans les mains des peuples (in French). Paris: Editions du Seuil. ISBN978-2-02-084697-4.
Bomford, David and Roy, Ashok, "A Closer Look - Colour", National Gallery, London (2009), ISBN978-1-85709-442-8
Chunling, Yan, "Chinese Red", Foreign Languages Press, Beijing (2008), ISBN978-7-119-04531-3
Related Research Articles
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondary color in the CMYK color model, and is the complementary color of cyan. Reds range from the brilliant yellow-tinged scarlet and vermillion to bluish-red crimson, and vary in shade from the pale red pink to the dark red burgundy.
A pigment is a powder used to add color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly insoluble and chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored substances which are soluble or go into solution at some stage in their use. Dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic. Pigments of prehistoric and historic value include ochre, charcoal, and lapis lazuli.
Alizarin is an organic compound with formula C 14H 8O 4 that has been used throughout history as a prominent red dye, principally for dyeing textile fabrics. Historically it was derived from the roots of plants of the madder genus. In 1869, it became the first natural dye to be produced synthetically.
Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple. It originally meant the color of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, Kermes vermilio, but the name is now sometimes also used as a generic term for slightly bluish-red colors that are between red and rose. It is the national color of Nepal.
Carmine – also called cochineal, cochineal extract, crimson lake, or carmine lake – is a pigment of a bright-red color obtained from the aluminium complex derived from carminic acid. Specific code names for the pigment include natural red 4, C.I. 75470, or E120. Carmine is also a general term for a particularly deep-red color.
A lake pigment is a pigment made by precipitating a dye with an inert binder, or mordant, usually a metallic salt. Unlike vermilion, ultramarine, and other pigments made from ground minerals, lake pigments are organic. Manufacturers and suppliers to artists and industry frequently omit the lake designation in the name. Many lake pigments are fugitive because the dyes involved are not lightfast. Red lakes were particularly important in Renaissance and Baroque paintings; they were often used as translucent glazes to portray the colors of rich fabrics and draperies.
Ochre, iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced by this pigment, especially a light brownish-yellow. A variant of ochre containing a large amount of hematite, or dehydrated iron oxide, has a reddish tint known as red ochre.
Vermilion is a color family and pigment most often used between antiquity and the 19th century from the powdered mineral cinnabar. It is synonymous with red orange, which often takes a modern form, but is 11% brighter.
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the dried oil paint film. The addition of oil or alkyd medium can also be used to modify the viscosity and drying time of oil paint. Oil paints were first used in Asia as early as the 7th century AD and can be seen in examples of Buddhist paintings in Afghanistan. Oil-based paints made their way to Europe by the 12th century and were used for simple decoration, but oil painting did not begin to be adopted as an artistic medium there until the early 15th century. Common modern applications of oil paint are in finishing and protection of wood in buildings and exposed metal structures such as ships and bridges. Its hard-wearing properties and luminous colors make it desirable for both interior and exterior use on wood and metal. Due to its slow-drying properties, it has recently been used in paint-on-glass animation. The thickness of the coat has considerable bearing on the time required for drying: thin coats of oil paint dry relatively quickly.
Scarlet is a bright red color, sometimes with a slightly orange tinge. In the spectrum of visible light, and on the traditional color wheel, it is one-quarter of the way between red and orange, slightly less orange than vermilion.
Rose madder is a red paint made from the pigment madder lake, a traditional lake pigment extracted from the common madder plant Rubia tinctorum.
The cochineal is a scale insect in the suborder Sternorrhyncha, from which the natural dye carmine is derived. A primarily sessile parasite native to tropical and subtropical South America through North America, this insect lives on cacti in the genus Opuntia, feeding on plant moisture and nutrients. The insects are found on the pads of prickly pear cacti, collected by brushing them off the plants, and dried.
Alizarin crimson is a shade of red that is biased slightly more towards purple than towards orange on the color wheel and has a blue undertone. It is named after the organic dye alizarin, found in the madder plant, and the related synthetic lake pigment alizarin crimson. William Henry Perkin had co-discovered a way to synthesize the pigment alizarin, which became known as the color alizarin crimson. Its consistency and lightfastness quickly made it a favourite red pigment for artists.
Natural dyes are dyes or colorants derived from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. The majority of natural dyes are vegetable dyes from plant sources—roots, berries, bark, leaves, and wood—and other biological sources such as fungi.
Dyeing is the craft of imparting colors to textiles in loose fiber, yarn, cloth or garment form by treatment with a dye. Archaeologists have found evidence of textile dyeing with natural dyes dating back to the Neolithic period. In China, dyeing with plants, barks and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years. Natural insect dyes such as Tyrian purple and kermes and plant-based dyes such as woad, indigo and madder were important elements of the economies of Asia and Europe until the discovery of man-made synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century. Synthetic dyes quickly superseded natural dyes for the large-scale commercial textile production enabled by the industrial revolution, but natural dyes remained in use by traditional cultures around the world.
Minium, also known as red lead or red lead oxide, is a bright orange red pigment that was widely used in the Middle Ages for the decoration of manuscripts and for painting. Often mistaken for less poisonous cinnabar and vermillion, minium was one of the earliest pigments artificially prepared and is still in use today. It was made by roasting white lead pigment in the air; the white lead would gradually turn yellow, then into an orange lead tetroxide. Minium's color varied depending upon how long the mineral was roasted.
The conservation and restoration of frescoes is the process of caring for and maintaining frescos, and includes documentation, examination, research, and treatment to insure their long-term viability, when desired.
Green pigments are the materials used to create the green colors seen in painting and the other arts. Most come from minerals, particularly those containing compounds of copper. Green pigments reflect the green portions of the spectrum of visible light, and absorb the others. Important green pigments in art history include Malachite and Verdigris, found in tomb paintings in Ancient Egypt, and the Green earth pigments popular in the Middle Ages. More recent greens, such as Cobalt Green, are largely synthetic, made in laboratories and factories.
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