The perfection of technique
Landscape was just one of the temptations drawing collectors to buy
Netherlandish art and painters to imitate it. Another was the
quality of execution distinguishing its panel paintings, whose
standard was never to be equalled. The very wood itself was chosen
with particular care. While artists in Italy generally made do with
local poplar, and in Spain with pine, in the Netherlands virtually
everyone opted for Baltic oak, which was shipped in from far afield.
The panels were cut out of the trunk in radial wedges, like slices
of cake, in order to prevent any later warping. The softer outermost
layers were rejected, so as to forestall any unnecessary extra risk
of attack by insects. As a further means of protection, the panels
were given solid frames and only then primed, usually on both sides.
The wood was thus sealed all round.
As a consequence, the practice of covering the panel with a layer of
material, still very common in the 14th century and seen, for
example, in the earlier Soest picture,
the Kaufmann Crucifixion and
the Schloss Tirol Altar, could
be largely dropped. On top of the primed panel, whose white ground
was intended to shine through the colours laid over it and thereby
heighten their luminosity, there was often then executed a detailed
preliminary drawing. Only after weeks of preparation, and years even
since the original tree had been felled, could painting actually
begin. This, too, was an extremely laborious and lengthy process. By
no means was the final colour applied straight away (alla prima).
Rather, the paint was laid down in several transparent layers
(glazes), moving from darker to lighter shades, allowing the
underlying layers to shine through. This alone would ensure the
tremendous luminosity, durability and exquisite enamel-like sheen of
Early Netherlandish panel paintings. Towards the end of the century
the number of glazes was gradually reduced, and on occasions in the
early 16th century, the white ground or the preliminary drawing was
deliberately allowed to shine through.
The paints themselves were naturally not available readymixed.
Workshop duties in the late Middle Ages included not just painting,
but also grinding the pigments. The degree of fineness of the powder
thereby influenced the colour it produced. Thus azurire, the most
commonly-used blue pigment of the day, only gave a blue effect if it
was not ground too finely. A second, important blue pigment was
ultramarine. While it offered a greater and more gem-like
luminosity, it was obtained from lapis lazuli, which had to be
imported from the Orient, from modern-day Afghanistan, and was thus
more expensive than gold. Significantly, it was employed with great
regularity by the first generation of Early Netherlandish artists,
but only extremely sporadically by the technically less ambitious
German artists of the day.
Other than in Cologne or even Italy, the Netherlandish artists had
almost entirely dispensed with gold, seeking instead to heighten the
illusion of reality with a permanently blue sky over a white haze.
Areas of gilding, whether grounds, haloes or drapery details,
involved a variety of complex procedures. For example, where they
were to be given an additional relief pattern by means of pouncing,
in other words the hammering of small indentations into the metal,
the layer of primer beneath them had to be considerably thicker.
Also required was an intermediary bole ground, usually reddish in
colour, to which the wafer-thin leaves of precious metal would
adhere.
According to the author of the best-known treatise on artist's
materials of his day, the painter Cennino Cennini (c. 1370— c.
1440), pupil of a son of
Taddeo Gaddi and thus
a "great-grandpupil" of
Giotto, one
Florentine gold coin yielded a hundred sheets of gold leaf barely
the size of the palm of a hand. After the leaf had been laid, it was
burnished with a gemstone or a tooth in order to bring out its
fascinating sheen. To avoid unnecessary expense, the inclusion of
gilded areas within a painting had to be carefully planned in
advance. Since the gilding was carried out first, before any actual
painting began, the artist had to decide exactly where on his panel
the costly material was to go. As a rule, no further gold leaf would
then be applied to the remainder of the composition.
Lastly, too, there was the choice of the right binding agent. Since
the claim was first made by the art historians of the 16th century,
Jan van Eyck
has long been credited with the invention of oil painting. The
reality is much more complicated. Binders containing oil were known
as early as the 13th century, even if they were not yet being
deployed with their later sophistication. The fact that they can be
found in English and Norwegian (Norwegian Master)
paintings in particular suggests that artists were already taking
into account external factors such as a damp climate. On the other
hand, painters in the Netherlands continued to employ egg tempera
long after the
van Eyck
were dead, not least because some pigments failed to mix well with
oily binders, which reduced their luminosity.
At the same time, mixed techniques played a far greater role than is
generally assumed today. Finally, artists also had to weigh up the
characteristics of the individual binders and in particular the oils
they employed, since some of them had major implications for the
actual painting process. Oils derived from different plants and in
different ways dried at different speeds, which meant that in some
cases an artist might have to wait many days before the next layer
of paint could be applied. This drying process could be speeded up
with the help of specific substances.
The artists of the late Middle Ages, and in particular artists in
the Netherlands, thus worked within a time frame which, for a public
which has grown up with the notion of the artist genius, is almost
impossible to grasp. They possessed a detailed knowledge of natural
science which, in the following generations and centuries, would
increasingly become the sphere of specialist technicians and today
the modern chemical industry. Simple, practical calculations were at
this stage far more important than the finer points of style,
content or even art theory which interest critics and viewers today.
Mechanical tasks such as grinding pigments, mixing up paints or
burnishing gold grounds took up a large part of their working day.
It is only when we take all this into consideration that we start to
appreciate why artist apprenticeships in the late Middle Ages
generally lasted four years, with the apprentice simply assisting
with general tasks at the beginning.
Pictures of St Luke, the patron saint of artists, painting the
Virgin provided numerous 15th-century artists with a welcome
opportunity to portray the activities of a contemporary artist's
workshop. In these we occasionally see an assistant in the
background grinding paints. In the painting by
Derick Baegert
(c. 1440—1515), an angel is lending the Evangelist a hand.
The techniques and training described above guaranteed the
enduringly high standards and astonishing homogeneity of Early
Netherlandish painting which continue to captivate the viewer today.
Towards 1500, these same qualities also led it to become a major
export not just to Italy, but also to Spain, Portugal and
Scandinavia. Mass production, however, inevitably brought about a
decline in the rigorous standards of execution which had originally
made the school so popular.
