A new lead-based yellow in the seventeenth century

Abstract

Since the important rediscovery by Jacobi in 1941 of the use of lead-tin yellow as a traditional artists' pigment, and the identification by Kühn of two distinct modifications of this material, elemental analysis and crystallographic determinations using X-ray diffraction (XRD) have been applied routinely to opaque yellow pigments from Old Master paintings. We report here the discovery and characterization by these methods of a new lead-based yellow in seventeenth-century paintings, based on a ternary oxide of lead, tin and antimony. This pigment is distinct from the two varieties of lead-tin yellow and from pure lead antimonate (Naples yellow); it appears to be restricted in use to Italian painting and specifically to paintings produced in Rome. Examples in the work of Poussin, Pietro da Cortona, Salvator Rosa, Sassoferrato, Gentileschi and Lanfranco are given, and art-historical interpretations based in the presence of this pigment are discussed.