Rembrandt’s special paint recipe

Abstract

This year marks the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt van Rijn’s death, but there is still much to learn about the Dutch master’s paintings. Now a team in Europe, led by Delft University of Technology’s Victor Gonzalez, reports the recipe Rembrandt used to create texture in certain portions of his paintings, a technique known as impasto, which involves applying thick layers of paint. The results reveal the chemical fingerprint of Rembrandt’s impasto, which could be used, along with other qualities, to authenticate Rembrandt’s work. Gonzalez’s team used a combination of high-angle and high-lateral resolution X-ray diffraction to study several microscopic paint samples from four Rembrandt masterpieces spanning the artist’s career (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201813105). In the impasto regions, they found the common pigment lead white, a mixture of cerussite (PbCO3) and hydrocerussite (Pb3(CO3)2(OH)2) that’s been used since antiquity. They also found something surprising, Gonzalez says: an unu...