Writing on Pigments in Natural History and Art Technology in Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland.

Abstract

Renaissance painters used a number of inorganic color materials. The development of mineralogy as a discipline opened a new discourse on mineral pigments. Agricola and other naturalists were familiar with the contemporary writings on art technology, but their focus was different. Therefore, the exchange of knowledge between these two color worlds remained selective. One possible meeting point was the Kunstkammer where the study of natural objects and materials was combined with an interest in the manual execution of a painting.