Silverpoint (one of several types of metalpoint) is a traditional drawing technique and tool first used by medieval scribes on manuscripts.
Silverpoint (one of several types of metalpoint) is a traditional drawing technique and tool first used by medieval scribes on manuscripts.
A silverpoint drawing is made by dragging a silver rod or wire across a surface, often prepared with gesso or ground of Chinese white. Silverpoint is one of several types of metalpoint used by scribes, craftsmen and artists since ancient times. Metalpoint styli were used for writing on soft surfaces (wax or bark), ruling and underdrawing on parchment, and drawing on prepared paper and panel supports. For drawing purposes, the essential metals used were lead, tin and silver. The softness of these metals made them effective drawing instruments. [1] Goldsmiths also used metalpoint drawings to prepare their detailed, meticulous designs. Albrecht Dürer's father was one such craftsman who later taught his young son to draw in metalpoint, to such good effect that his 1484 Self-Portrait at the Age of 13 is still considered a masterpiece.
In the late Gothic/early Renaissance era, silverpoint emerged as a fine line drawing technique. Not blunting as easily as lead or tin, and rendering precise detail, silverpoint was especially favored in Florentine and Flemish workshops. Silverpoint drawings of this era include model books and preparatory sheets for paintings. Artists who worked in silverpoint include Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer and Raphael. Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte provides a window on the practice of silver and leadpoint drawing, as well as preparing metalpoint grounds, in the late 14th century. [2] [3] Susan Dorothea White's book Draw Like da Vinci describes the silverpoint technique of Leonardo da Vinci. [4]
As noted by Francis Ames-Lewis, drawing styles changed at the end of the 16th century, resulting in a decline for metalpoint. The discovery of graphite deposits at Seathwaite in Borrowdale, Cumbria, England, in the early 1500s, and its increasing availability to artists in a pure, soft (and erasable) form hastened silverpoint's eclipse. Artists sought more gestural qualities, for which graphite, red and black chalk were better suited. Ink and wash drawings are also prevalent in the period. In addition, these other drawing techniques required less effort and were more forgiving than silver, which resists erasure and leaves a fainter line. Furthermore, the preparation of silverpoint supports, usually with hide glue with finely ground bone ash, was labor-intensive. Modern practitioners use zinc, pre-prepared acrylic-based grounds or titanium white tempera or marble dust as a ground. Natural chalks and charcoal have the advantage of producing immediate results on uncoated papers. [5]
Dutch artists Hendrick Goltzius and Rembrandt maintained the silverpoint tradition into the 17th century, as it declined in other parts of Europe. Rembrandt made several silverpoints on prepared vellum, the best-known being the portrait of his wife Saskia, 1633. [6] Botanical artists and architects continued to use metalpoint because of its exact lines. However, artists who continued this tradition of fine line drawing, such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, turned to graphite, which gradually improved in quality and availability throughout Europe since the 17th century. Silverpoint was for practical purposes rendered obsolete by the 18th century. [7] There has however been a contemporary art revival among European and American artists and academies because the medium imposes considerable discipline in draughtsmanship since drawings cannot be erased or altered.
Joseph Meder, [8] Alphonse Legros, the Pre-Raphaelites and Joseph Stella helped revitalize the technique. Art historian Meder created interest in the traditional technique in Austria and Germany, while artist and teacher Legros did likewise in England. In the early 20th century, Stella was one of the few American artists working in this method on the East Coast of the United States. Stella explored the technique on zinc white gouache prepared grounds, often with crayon and other media. Stella's silverpoint oeuvre includes the 1921 portrait of Marcel Duchamp (MoMA, Katherine S. Dreier Bequest). [9] On the West Coast Xavier Martínez, the Mexican-American artist who had studied in Paris at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in the late 1890s during the resurgence of interest in silverpoint, taught this technique at the California College of the Arts from 1909 to the late 1930s. [10] The last known exhibition of Martinez's silverpoints was in 1921 at the Print Room of San Francisco where critics praised his "unusual" and "strongly futuristic" action figures on an unconventional dark mottled ground as "archaic in execution ... terse, alert ... with a bit too much flesh." [11] [12] [13]
An exhibit, "The Fine Line: Drawing with Silver in America" was curated for the Norton Museum of Art, in 1985 by Bruce Weber. [14] In 2015, the National Gallery of Art and the British Museum exhibited "Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns". [15]
A traditional silverpoint stylus is made with a small fine rod of silver, such as jewelry wire, which is inserted into a wooden rod. Another design is a silver-tipped metal stylus with points on both ends. An example of this type is shown in Rogier van der Weyden's St. Luke Drawing the Virgin, ca. 1435–40 (Boston Museum of Fine Arts). For a contemporary stylus, jeweler's wire may be inserted into a pin vise or mechanical pencil. [1]
The initial marks of silverpoint appear grey as other metalpoints, but silverpoint lines, when exposed to air, tarnish to a warm brown tone. The oxidation becomes perceptible over a period of several months. The speed of oxidation varies according to the level of pollution in the air. Historically, silverpoint styli ranged widely in composition from pure silver to heavily alloyed with copper (over 20% weight). [3] [16] [7] [1]
In the Middle Ages, metalpoint was used directly on parchment for the underdrawing of illuminated manuscripts or model books. On uncoated parchment (and paper), silverpoint is particularly light in value. However, since the 14th century, silverpoint was used more successfully on prepared supports. A traditional ground may be prepared with a rabbit skin glue solution pigmented with bone ash, chalk and/or lead white. Contemporary grounds include acrylic gesso, gouache and commercially prepared claycoat papers. The slight tooth of the ground preparation takes a little of the silver as it is drawn across the surface.
Silverpoint has encompassed a wide range of styles from Dürer's curvilinear precision to Rembrandt's gestural sketches. Silverpoint has also proven adaptable to modern styles. Thomas Wilmer Dewing's late 19th Century silverpoint portraits are essentially tonal, as are Paula Gerard's mid-20th-century abstract compositions. Gerard's Vortex (Fairweather Hardin Gallery) is an innovative combination of silverpoint, goldpoint and watercolor on casein-coated parchment. [14]
Old Master silverpoints are typically intimate in scale, recalling the technique's roots in manuscript illumination. However, modern artists have also utilized this fine line technique for works on an increasingly large scale. John Wilde's The Great Autobiographical Silverpoint Drawing (Art Institute of Chicago 1986.8) which is 38 in × 91 in (97 cm × 231 cm), one of the largest modern silverpoints.
Silverpoint was also used in conjunction with other metal points by 20th-century artists. Pedro Joseph de Lemos, the Director of the San Francisco Art Institute from 1911 to 1917, popularized his "techniques" in California art schools with his published instructions on the easy fabrication of various types of metal points that would react with inexpensive coated paper. [17] In his The Last of the Old Woodstock Inn, 1968 (The Art Institute of Chicago), Ivan Le Lorraine Albright used silver with platinum, gold, copper and brasspoint on commercially prepared video media paper. Contemporary artists continue to push the boundaries of this ancient drawing technique. Contemporary American silverpoint artist Carol Prusa combines graphite and binder on acrylic hemispheres with metal leaf, video projection and fiber optics. [18] Susan Schwalb has combined smoke and fire in silver and copperpoints in the 1980s and currently creates drawings and paintings using numerous metals as well as acrylic paint. [14] Jeannine Cook combines touches of colour with monochromatic drawings, employing such media as Prismacolour, watercolour, Plike paper, silk fabric and silk threads. Experimental metalpoint techniques including goldpoint on silicon carbide paper are demonstrated in Draw Like da Vinci by Susan Dorothea White, [4] as in Gilding the Lily (2005). Elizabeth Whiteley interfaces with computer-based imagery. She draws with a silver stylus over inkjet prints that have been coated with a translucent prepared ground. [19]
Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface. The instruments used to make a drawing are pencils, crayons, pens with inks, brushes with paints, or combinations of these, and in more modern times, computer styluses with graphics tablets or gamepads in VR drawing software.
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.
Gilding is a decorative technique for applying a very thin coating of gold over solid surfaces such as metal, wood, porcelain, or stone. A gilded object is also described as "gilt". Where metal is gilded, the metal below was traditionally silver in the West, to make silver-gilt objects, but gilt-bronze is commonly used in China, and also called ormolu if it is Western. Methods of gilding include hand application and gluing, typically of gold leaf, chemical gilding, and electroplating, the last also called gold plating. Parcel-gilt objects are only gilded over part of their surfaces. This may mean that all of the inside, and none of the outside, of a chalice or similar vessel is gilded, or that patterns or images are made up by using a combination of gilt and ungilted areas.
Cennino d'Andrea Cennini was an Italian painter influenced by Giotto. He was a student of Agnolo Gaddi in Florence. Gaddi trained under his father, called Taddeo Gaddi, who trained with Giotto.
Verre églomisé is a French term referring to the process of applying both a design and gilding onto the rear face of glass to produce a mirror finish. The name is derived from the 18th-century French decorator and art-dealer Jean-Baptiste Glomy (1711–1786), who was responsible for its revival.
A sketchbook is a book or pad with blank pages for sketching and is frequently used by artists for drawing or painting as a part of their creative process. Some also use sketchbooks as a sort of blueprint for future art pieces. The exhibition of sketchbooks at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University in 2006 suggested that there were two broad categories for classifying sketches:
Sinopia is a dark reddish-brown natural earth pigment, whose reddish colour comes from hematite, a dehydrated form of iron oxide. It was widely used in Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages for painting, and during the Renaissance it was often used on the rough initial layer of plaster for the underdrawing for a fresco. The word came to be used both for the pigment and for the preparatory drawing itself, which may be revealed when a fresco is stripped from its wall for transfer.
Susan Dorothea White is an Australian artist and author. She is a narrative artist and her work concerns the natural world and human situation, increasingly incorporating satire and irony to convey her concern for human rights and equality. She is the author of Draw Like da Vinci (2006).
Susan Schwalb is a contemporary silverpoint artist.
The Kupferstichkabinett, or Museum of Prints and Drawings, is a prints museum in Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Berlin State Museums, and is located in the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz. It is the largest museum of graphic art in Germany, with more than 500,000 prints and around 110,000 individual works on paper.
De pictura is a treatise or commentarii written by the Italian humanist and artist Leon Battista Alberti. The first version, composed in Latin in 1435, was not published until 1450. It is one of his three treatises on art; the other two are De statua and De re aedificatoria, that would form the Renaissance concept for the fine arts: painting, sculpture, and architecture.
Parchment craft, also known as Pergamano, is the art of embellishing and decorating parchment paper through the use of techniques such as embossing, perforating, stippling, cutting and coloring.
A pencil drawing is a drawing that is made with a pencil.
Gordon Hanley is an Australian visual artist based in Brisbane, Queensland, who paints in the realist and photorealist art style. A self-taught artist, his art mainly consists of paintings, drawings and masks. He creates watercolours of mainly urban scenes of small town Australia and highly detailed paintings of birds. More recently he has become involve din silverpoint drawing as well. Most of his recent work features drawings in 24ct gold and pure silver on paper with prepared grounds of his own design and development. His current work in this medium features in photorealist style.
Leo Dee was an American artist and teacher. A native of Newark, New Jersey, he achieved first regional and then national prominence for his "incredibly detailed" and realistic silverpoint drawings which conveyed "the softest and most subtle transitions of tonal values."
Jeannine Cook, is a contemporary metalpoint artist who works from her studio in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, after living in the United States. Encouraged to concentrate on art rather than languages and freelance journalism by Jeanne Nelson Szabo, a former Professor of Art at University of California Los Angeles, Cook initially exhibited watercolours in Westchester, New York, and elsewhere in New York from 1979 onwards.
Elizabeth Whiteley is an American fine artist and designer.
Head of a Bear is a drawing study made by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1480. It is small in scale, measuring only 7 by 7 centimetres, and is rendered in silverpoint pencil. It is thought to be part of a study of animals that Leonardo made in this period. The artist may have drawn upon this study when painting the head of the animal in his Lady with an Ermine of 1489–1490. The drawing was owned by the British painter Sir Thomas Lawrence in the 18th century and by the art collector Norman Colville in the early 20th century. The American billionaire Thomas Kaplan purchased the drawing in 2008. It sold in 2021 for a total of £8.8 million, a record for a drawing by Leonardo.
In visual arts, the ground is a prepared surface that covers the support of the picture and underlies the actual painting. Occasionally the term is also used in a broad sense to designate any surface used for painting, for example, paper for watercolor or plaster for fresco.
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