MADDER LAKE

This came in to use in the Middle ages as mostly a dye, and then went out again, returning in the fourteenth century as a pigment. A Parisian author at the beginning of the fifteenth century writes, "warantia is a color, or raw material of color, because if it is cooked in water with lac or ivy gum it made a red color called cynople." Warantia is garance in modern French, and that means madder: a field plant which grows wild in Italy and was cultivated in France as a dyestuff in the end of the thirteenth century. As an extract of the root of the madder plant, which was allowed to grow for two years in the ground, the root is not red itself. But it contains alizarine, which can be made to produce red lakes of several shades and precipitated on a clay base. it is a beautiful transparent red, but impermanent. In the trade it is available as rose, light, medium to dark, and violet. Rose madder bleaches out in a few months, but the darker tones are more permanent. Rubens' madder, Rembrandt madder and Van Dyck red are doubtful color mixtures of fantastic nature, and in fresco, lime destroys madder completely. Alizarin madder lake (artificial color made from synthetic alizarine, now known as alizarin crimson) is a coal-tar color, and in permanence exceeds the natural product, which in contrast ages more gracefully than the artificial. The permanence of Alizarin madder has been fixed as a standard for other coal-tar colors. In the original root there is a second coloring agent called purpurin, which when removed creates a superior permanence.

The pigment was at one time sold in cakes which contained starch to insure their solidity. They were broken up into powder, whereas crystallized madder lakes could not be used due to the difficulty in grinding. Madder lake requires about 70% oil, dries poorly and should therefore be first mixed with linseed oil and ground with an addition of varnish (damar). Alizarin madder lake can be used with oil, tempera or watercolors, but not with wet lime, as vegetable based pigments can never be used in fresco. It is however reliable on wet plaster interior walls. It has been observed over time that madder lake bleeds, and when so it has been an indication that it has not been used properly, perhaps too thickly in underpainting, or that it has been mixed with impermanent coal-tar dyes.

MALACHITE GREEN AND GREEN VERDITER

Also known as mountain green, Bremen green, copper green, and green bice. Malachite is found in many parts of the world in the upper oxidized zones of copper ore deposits, associated in nature with Azurite, the native blue carbonate of copper, which contains less chemically bound water. Malachite is more abundant in nature, and large deposits have been found in the Ural mountain region of the former USSR, and in the Katanga district of Zaire; also in Zimbabwe and in Chile. By grinding and washing it was one of the very popular greens of medieval painting, in Asia as well as Europe, though its sources are not well known, with sparse mention of copper mines in Hungary being a probable source of both Azurite and Malachite, with an added possibility at Chessy, near Lyon. Like Azurite, it is not at its best in oil, and has therefore largely gone out of use in the West since the introduction of oil painting. It is still much used in the Orient, particularly in Japan, though modern color dealers in Japan now get their malachite from Africa and Chile. The green mineral used in present day as a decorative stone for furniture or wood objects. It has a grain rather like that of wood, and is easily inlaid with skillful carving; but none of it has nay great intrinsic value. It occurs in several modifications: pale to bright green, but is generally found in conjunction with Azurite, often merging imperceptibly into the blue color. Geologically, Azurite is the parent, and malachite: a changed form of the original blue deposit. Malachite was used in Egypt for eye-paint as early as pre-dynastic times and has been found on tomb paintings since the fourth dynasty; it occurs on Sinai and in the eastern desert.

Though it was abundant and widely used in the middle ages, we find very few recipes for its preparation as a color, and few references to its use. Cennino calls it Verde Azzurro, "Blue-Green", and its close association with the blue probably made it unnecessary to treat it separately in the cookbooks, just as rules for handling silver are lumped under those for handling gold. It is also possible that we are wrong in supposing all the bright, pale, crusty, bluish greens in medieval manuscript and panel painting to be malachite; but it matches it so closely that we believe in the identification. Another possible reason was that to be useful as a bright green it must be ground coarse, as finely ground renders it too pale. Early examples of artificial malachite found on easel paintings, have been generally in egg tempera medium. In European paintings a common device for obtaining a green of increased saturation was to glaze with transparent copper resinate over malachite. The Japanese painters, had no such problem, as they employed coarsely ground malachite to represent the deep green of foliage and a more finely ground pigment for the bright green of costumes. In European easel painting, malachite seems to have been of importance mainly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in both egg tempera and oil medium, undergoing some minor revival in the nineteenth century.

It is quite suitable for the technique of true fresco. It is moderately permanent and unaffected by strong light; even though theoretically subject to blackening when mixed with sulfide pigments, in practice, darkening from this cause has not been reported. The malachite areas on medieval Italian frescoes are often still fairly bright green. Vanoccio Biringuccio, fifteenth century Italy: (On Malachite): "This is more or less green or blue according to the quantity of mixture and more or less abundant according to the powerful exhalation of the ore. It is also gathered with care from the colored stones and is cleaned and made fine by washing and grinding. That which is the finest and of the loveliest color is the most highly esteemed by the master painters."

MANGANESE BLACK

A strongly heated manganese brown which has a good reputation in lime, hence excellent in fresco.

MANGANESE VIOLET

This is a Nuremberg violet, a mineral violet and is permanent, heat proof and non poisonous. However as a manufactured product, it is not a beautiful tone, tinting use occasionally in fresco and mineral painting. The new manganese violets of German manufacture are powerful, fast colors furnished in several tones. It covers and dries well in oil and tempera, and works well in tempera, pastel, and watercolor, but not in fresco. When heated it fuses into a hard white substance.

MARBLE DUST

This was used in Pompeii as a filler material for paints, or as additions to colors for texture and the damping of bright colors. This was also the purpose for it in the Renaissance. However today it is used primarily in the preparations of grounds and in fresco plaster.

MARS YELLOW

More transparent than the natural ochres as they contain less clay, and are disproportionately expensive. They must be well washed, but are very strong and permanent artificial ochres

MAZARINE

Robert Henderson, a mid-late 19th century English miniaturist makes reference to this color in a book on English miniatures: "...There is a new red brought out which is warranted to be thoroughly permanent; it is a useful color, called mazarine, and comes in for everything. There have been suspicions cast upon rose madder, but I have found it stand well enough in ordinary miniature painting." This is all the information I have ever found on this pigment, so it seems it wasn't nearly so useful as once thought. This quote it should be noted was found in a book published in 1908, where it referred to him as the "late" Robert Henderson, thus we can assume that this pigment was a Victorian invention..

MICA, MUSOCOVITE MICA

Though many micaceous minerals are recognized in mineralogy, the name of mica is mostly applied to that of muscovite which is hydrous potassium aluminum silicate, and is found in nature in thinly layered laminae, in small deposits worldwide. When it is ground, it is used as a lubricating agent and as a reinforcing pigment in paints, which raises the question to me, if it's effect is similar to that of adding ground aluminum. In the Far East it was occasionally used in painted designs where the shiny surface it left gave a similar effect to that of metal. In contemporary work, I have seen it used to add luminosity and pearlescence to paint, which aluminum powder also does, but needs to be used in cautious amounts as it makes the paint extremely gummy in texture and dries it more quickly. When reading about other metal powders, some accounts mention their use as that of a drying agent to the pigment.

MINERAL BLACK

A carbonaceous slate, which is permanent, but does not cover as well as Ivory black.

MINIUM

Red oxide of lead, not to be confused with iron oxide, and commercially sold as Saturn red. It is produced by heating white lead in the presence of air (for a more detailed explanation of the process, refer to lead white). It is highly poisonous, sensitive to hydrogen sulphide, attacked by hydrochloric acid but indifferent to alkalis. Red lead also should not discolor alcohol; if it does it has been adulterated with coal tar dye (most likely a test of the color upon purchase from the chemists at that time); also, when doctored with coal tar it has a tendency to bleed when painted over with white lead. Dilute nitric acid turns red lead into brown lead peroxide: the last stage to which white lead may be oxidized. Under great heat red lead becomes a light violet, and when cooled again, a yellowish red. As a pigment, it quickly turns dark in the light, but when mixed with oil (and it requires only 15% oil), it is fairly permanent. When mixed in oil with white lead, it tends to fade rather than turn dark, and stands up better than white lead with vermilion. Red lead can only be used as an oil color; as a powder and in fresco it eventually turns black. Freshly ground red lead is best (thus why it is no longer used as paints are most widely available pre-prepared through manufacturers), and when red lead is produced under insufficient heat, red-yellow oxide forms, which is not sufficiently permanent. This can be eliminated by washing with sugar-water. When it is ground in oil, a little wax should be added to guard against its hardening too quickly. Red lead ground in oil dries the quickest of all pigments.

This pigment was very common all through the Middle Ages in manuscript embellishments and painting. It was not used on walls, and rarely on panels, but in manuscripts it was used in conjunction with the more expensive cinnabar and vermilion as one of the chief elements of colored decoration. It was cheap, and easy to make, and wasn't dependent on the supply of any rare material. As long as cinnabar was hard to get, and before vermilion became common, this form of minium known as orange minium was the nearest approach to a bright red color that a painter could manage for his everyday work. Pliny called it color flammeus (flame color), and was at times called cinnabar as well as stupium. The confusion of medieval terminology in regard to red colors is immense, so it is difficult to trace all the facts behind these colors before the 15th century. In Medieval times, miniare meant to work with minium, so one who worked in it was called a miniator, and the things that he was to miniate were called miniatura. So miniatures were originally the sections of a manuscript that were to be painted in red. Over time, as manuscripts were small and incidental, the word miniature came to mean diminutive.

MIXED GREENS

These are greens made simply by mixing other pigments; Cennino mentions that Terre Verte mixed with white makes a sage green, and to be lightened and still kept properly green, add yellow and not white. Mixtures of blue with yellow would combine naturally to make a wide variety of greens, however, let's say indigo with orpiment was so admired that a compound of this sort almost took on the character of an independent pigment. (Bearing in mind the limitation of ultramarine, which made a somewhat more intense green than that made with indigo. Saffron was also mixed with blues to bestow them with certain green qualities, but as the yellow was not reliably permanent, these colors have sometimes faded out. (The phenomenon of blue left by the fading of the yellow element of a mixed green is not unusual in manuscripts, but is most familiar in tapestries.) Sometimes the yellow was used to glaze over a blue in which case binding medium remains alone to show at the edges where these colors once were. They were however, mixed greens, not the basis of most work, as most painters would not tend to possibly lose the individuality of their hardgotten colors in suck complicated mixtures; there was in medieval manuscripts a decided preference for single pigments displayed to their best advantage.

MIXED PURPLES

Except for folium and archil, and to some extent whelk reds, the Middle Ages seem to have depended for their purples largely upon mixtures of red and blue colors. There were a great number of purplish red lakes (notably the naturally violet lac lake), and the medieval eye favored blues with a violet cast. Mixed purples were therefore readily made as needed. For walls, hematite and the dark red ochres served well alone or mixed with black. Colors which we now call purple were not common in medieval painting, partly because of fading or being neutralized through the yellowing of varnish, or perhaps they were not particularly fashionable. "Royal purple" could have been easily mixed by medieval painters but seem not to have been used, and more often in any case as shading upon other colors than as an independent tone.

MIXED WHITE

This is an oil tube color which is a mixture of cremnitz and zinc whites, and is said to have all the good qualities of the two, without any of the bad. It naturally dried more slowly than lead white, as an addition of zinc white would cause that, and without knowing first hand, I would assume would have slightly less coverage than lead white alone, as zinc white is somewhat transparent.

MOLYBDATE ORANGE

A bright, scarlet pigment known chemically as Lead Molybdate. It contains chromate and sulphate, and owing to its lead content, has great coverage but is not stable when exposed to sulphur gases, and is only somewhat lightfast. As an industrial pigment it is valuable when mixed with 25% Toluidine Toner, which forms a brilliant vermilion. When this is ground in Stand oil and thinned, it at one point was ideal for painting the smokestacks on steamships. The stand oil prevented sulphur gases from acting upon it.

MONASTRAL BLUE

See Phthalocyanine.

MOSAIC GOLD

One of the most esteemed imitations of gold was a yellow sulphide of tin, made by a difficult and elaborate process, and to modern eyes not a very convincing alternative to the ruddy metal. This color was known as aurum musicum, or in English, "mosaic gold"; why it is called mosaic we don't know. The recipes for it are common in texts from all parts of Europe after the fourteenth century. The Portuguese tell how to make this "gold with which you may illuminate, or paint, or make capitals, or write." In the fourteenth century a new name was applied to mosaic gold being color purpurinus, and from that the word Cennino uses, porporina, coming perhaps from the association between purple and gold. A color purpurinus may have been thought of as resembling the sort of color used for gold writing in a codex purpureus, and if so, the idea of these magnificent volumes from the earlier Middle ages must have been impressive in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to cause the word "mosaic" to give way to the word "purpurine". We do not know when it was invented but that it may not have been known in Europe before the thirteenth century. It became well known in the fourteenth, and has been ever since. It's a sulphide of tin, made by mixing tin with sulphur under special conditions including the presence of sal ammoniac and mercury, and long and carefully regulated heating. Ordinarily the tin was made into an amalgam with mercury, and ground to powder. This powder was then ground and mixed with sal ammoniac and sulphur, to produce a black compound consisting chiefly of sulfides of tin and mercury. the mixture was heated for hours in stages, increasing the strength of the fire until at the end of nine hours or so, little sparkles of "gold" could be seen on the end of a stick plunged into the vessel.

Mosaic gold made this way looks a bit like bronze powder. However on inspecting it in person, it is so little golden that it might be mistaken for orpiment or ever for an ochre, therefore it takes a trained eye to recognize it in medieval works. Without the multitude of recipes written to signify the importance of its existence, we may not have known to look for it to begin with. Cennino spoke of it as being primarily a manuscript painters pigment with some use in panels, and warns against using it in conjunction with real gold, as the little mercury it contains will ruin the effect of gold-leaf gilding.