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The Small Cowper Madonna, ca. 1505National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.This is where names start to get tricky. Ancient authors used the word “vermilion” to describe the pigment made from grinding up cinnabar. But vermilion also refers to the synthetic version of the color, invented in China thousands of years before it was brought to the West by Arab alchemists during the Middle Ages. This vermillion was used extensively by Renaissance painters, including Titian, who is renowned for his luxuriant reds. Although the pigment is normally an orangey-red, when exposed to sunlight it can darken to black.Vermilion became increasingly popular beginning in the 16th century, and the industry for the pigment boomed—first in Venice, and later in the Netherlands and Germany. It appeared on shelves everywhere from hardware stores to apothecaries to paint shops. In the end, although it was pricier and less stable than min
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“El Greco in New York” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014-2015)Cochineal bugs were the third most valuable export from the New World in the 16th century, right behind gold and silver. These white, pellet-shaped insects didn’t look like much when attached to the pads of Mexico’s prickly pear cacti, but when dried and crushed they produced a vivid red hue that would take Europe by storm. Although originally a dye, cochineal was soon transformed into a paint called “carmine,” which took up residence in 15th- and 16th-century painters’ palettes—Rembrandt, Anthony van Dyck, Rubens, and Vermeer among them.It persisted into later centuries, with artists including J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough incorporating the paint into their works. Although carmine produced a rich crimson glaze, often used on top of other reds like vermilion, it also had a tendency to fade in sunlight. The compositions of 18th-century portrait painter Joshua Reynolds fell victim to this phenomenon; his subjects look pale and ghostly today, more like marble sculptures than living beings.