Can’t bear to look straight： those heavy-mouthed pigments are simply painting with life.
Horse urine color, bovine blood red, lethal green … … Artists are really painting with their lives!
Mummy Brown: Pigment extracted from dismembered bodies.
Did you know that mummies were used to make paints? The name of this color is ""Mummy brown”，Made of crushed mummy flesh, white asphalt and myrrh.
Mummy is one of the symbols of mysterious ancient Egypt, but there was a time in history when mummies were regarded as commodities rather than precious cultural relics, and the business of buying and selling mummies was very prosperous.
They are cut into small pieces and imported into Europe, where they are used as fuel, fertilizer and even a panacea for all diseases. With the rising price, the huge profits even prompted some profiteers to fake mummies with tramps or animal carcasses.
Painters from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance often bought medicinal materials from pharmacies as pigments, and mummy brown was discovered by painters under such circumstances. Mummy brown is rich in color, high in transparency and more expressive than ordinary brown pigments, so it is very popular.
Micheál Martin Radling’s "Inside the Kitchen" uses this kind of pigment extensively.
Don’t worry that these works will smell rotten, and spices such as frankincense and myrrh will be used when making mummies, so the smell of mummified brown may be quite good.
In 1964, due to the sharp decrease in the number of raw mummies, the genuine mummy brown disappeared from the market.
Now you can still buy the pigment called "Mummy Brown", but there is no mummy in the raw material.It is made by mixing kaolin, Shi Ying, goethite and iron ore powder.Compared with authentic mummy brown, it is usually yellow or red in color.
Carmine: parasites become food pigments.
Carmine is not the same thing as the rouge used by ancient women in China. Most of the rouge used for makeup is made of petals, while carmine is made of a crushed cactus parasite.
This bug is called cochineal bug, which originated in America. It was once used by Indians to make up, and was later brought back to Europe by the Spanish.
The color of carmine is stronger than the traditional red dye originally used by Europeans, so it immediately became popular among nobles. It was not only used by painters to paint, but also used to make cardinals’ robes.
At that time, the identity of cochineal insects was always a trade secret. It was not until the end of the 16th century that everyone knew that this beautiful red color actually came from the blood of insects.
Now, the red dye made by cochineal insects is still often used, and the scope of use is much wider than expected. Although carmine is made of insects, it is a natural edible pigment recognized by the US Food and Drug Administration and is often used to color food.
However, everyone seems to find it hard to accept indirect "eating insects". Starbucks in the United States once caused an uproar because it used carmine in its drinks.
Besides being "hidden" in food, carmine also appears in cosmetics, especially in high-grade lipsticks.
In short, it’s really not easy to get this bug out of your mouth!
Indian yellow: the color of cow urine that caused protests
Do you know that?/You know what? The elegant and quiet women in Vermeer’s works and the hazy light and shadow in Turner’s works are actually painted with cow urine!
The color of Indian yellow is clear and reddish, which is the heart of many famous painters. Because of its high transparency, it is very suitable for expressing beautiful things in the sun.
Indian yellow originated in India, and its shape is a lump of balls with a slight odor. It has been widely used by painters after being exported to Europe, but the production process is really strange: if cows only eat mango leaves for a long time, their urine will turn orange-yellow, and the urine will be collected in buckets and evaporated to extract yellow particles, which is Indian yellow.
Now we can see that Indian Huang Dou is artificially synthesized from other materials, but this is not because the raw materials are disgusting, but because the production process is inhuman.
In the hundreds of years when Huang Dawei was popular in India, it remained mysterious, and people made various speculations about its raw materials. It was not until someone went to India for a field investigation that the mystery was unveiled, and this revelation triggered a fierce protest movement, because most cows fed in this way were malnourished and would eventually weaken and die.
So in 1908, this production method was stopped on suspicion of cruelty to animals.
Chrome yellow: It makes Van Gogh crazy.
When it comes to chrome yellow, you have to mention Van Gogh. Chrome yellow is Van Gogh’s favorite color.
It is cheap, opaque and high in color rendering, and the works drawn with it are full and bright, with great tension. The famous Sunflower uses chrome yellow extensively.
The raw material of chrome yellow is lead chromate, which will lead to lead poisoning when exposed in large quantities.
One of the characteristics of Van Gogh’s works is that the pigments are particularly thick, which leads him to coexist with a large number of toxic pigments for a long time. He also has the habit of licking his brush while meditating, which further aggravates his symptoms of lead poisoning.
Some people suspect that Van Gogh’s insanity is caused by this beautiful and deadly yellow pigment, while others think that chrome yellow pigment has even influenced Van Gogh’s painting style in turn, because some images in his works are very similar to the hallucinations that lead poisoning patients will have.
Coincidentally, Goya, a Spanish painter, also loves to use chrome yellow. When he is in a good mood, he will dip his fingers directly into the paint and paint. As a result, he is also suffering from lead poisoning.
In fact, chrome yellow pigment is not a high-quality pigment. It is not only toxic, but also becomes dull due to the chemical reaction caused by ultraviolet radiation after sun exposure. Its heat resistance and acid resistance are relatively general, and few people use it now.
Bone snail purple: a malodorous liquid specially designed by the royal family
Bone snail purple, also known as royal purple, is the royal color of the Roman royal family, but the production process is disgusting. Not only do dyes stink, but even dyed clothes smell fishy.
Bone snail purple is made from the mucus of dye bone snail. The appearance of the dyed bone snail is different from that of the common conch, with many sharp spines all over it. The submaxillary gland secretes colorless milky mucus, which was originally used for predation, defense and immunity, and will turn purple after contact with light and oxygen. In addition to the dye Oncomelania, many other animals of Oncomelania can secrete this color-changing mucus.
When extracting purple dye from bone snail, people will take out the meat of bone snail, add salt to soak it, heat it with steam, and add human urine to adjust the color depth.
Although it stinks, the color of bone snail purple is bright and lasting, and it will not fade over the years. The value of bone snail purple is also reflected in its rarity, which requires tens of thousands of bone snails to produce one gram of dye, so it is expensive, and it is suitable as a symbol of power and status.
In the past, the production and use of bone snail purple were strictly restricted, and it could only be used for emperor’s clothing, clergy’s robes and military orders. It was not until 1856 that a chemist accidentally discovered the world’s first synthetic chemical dye, aniline purple, and purple gradually faded from the aristocratic color.
Cattle blood red: the result of thinking "red" and thinking crazy
Red is a color that fascinates nobles in history. The brighter it is, the more it symbolizes wealth and status. In Europe at that time, the dyeing process was almost equivalent to magic, and the dye formula was a secret that craftsmen would not tell anyone.
For a long time, the red dyes on the European market were all "Turkish red" imported from the Ottoman Empire. Western craftsmen were eager to replicate this mysterious oriental red, so they made all kinds of strange attempts.
In addition to the main ingredient, madder, they also tried to add cow dung, cow blood and deteriorated olive oil in the complicated processing process, or Brazil sappan, lac and lichen, but the dyeing effect was not ideal, often brown and orange, which was easy to fade and smelled bad.
Later, a kind of red pigment from Central America entered Europe. This kind of red is so bright that craftsmen are no longer obsessed with copying the oriental red. This kind of red is the carmine made by cochineal insects mentioned above.
Scheler green: the fatal discovery of chemists
Green is the hardest hit area of toxic pigments. At first, people used copper carbonate to dye, and then Scheler green was discovered, and then Paris green and cobalt green appeared. Each green is beautiful, but each green is toxic.
Scheler green is copper arsenite, which is bright but unstable, not only toxic, but also carcinogenic. Scheler green has poisoned many people in history, and Napoleon may be one of them.
Napoleon died in St. Helena in 1821. There are different opinions on the cause of death. Many scholars have determined that the arsenic content in Napoleon’s hair is much higher than that of normal people. Some people speculate that Napoleon was poisoned and killed. Others point out that the abnormal arsenic content may be related to the Scheler green wallpaper in Napoleon’s room. St. Helena has a humid climate, and Napoleon may die of chronic poisoning due to long-term inhalation of arsenic-containing gas released from wallpaper.
Scheler Green is named after Scheler, the chemist who discovered it. During his life, he made many discoveries that are very important to human beings, such as oxygen and chlorine. After he discovered that copper arsenite can be used as a green dye, this color became popular in the clothing and construction industries. Later, people became sick and even died because of "toxic skirts" and "toxic rooms", and the toxicity of Scheler green began to be recognized. However, people have not completely abandoned it and turned to use it as an insecticide.
Lead white: Did the Queen die of her beauty?
Many people want to have snow-white skin, and there have been various whitening products in history, and lead white is one of them.
Cosmetics containing lead and white have been popular in eastern and western countries, and painters who often depict women’s portraits, such as Renault-Argentina, also use lead and white pigments to show women’s white and beautiful skin after makeup. Even today, whitening products are exposed because of excessive lead content.
In fact, lead white is not the best choice for whitening.
Lead white is the basic lead carbonate, which makes the skin look "dead white" through its strong hiding power. When lead enters the skin, it will not only make the skin dull, but also lead poisoning.
The cause of death of Queen Elizabeth I of England may be lead white powder poisoning, and painters who often use lead white paint also suffer greatly. Because of its remarkable whitening effect, although it has been banned repeatedly in the past, people who insist on using it are still emerging one after another.
There is also a kind of lead white, which is not only toxic, but also a little disgusting.
Its figure appeared in the murals of Egyptian tombs and the icons of Christ in the Renaissance, and it was made by mixing lead ingots, vinegar and cow dung. Although the material is quite blasphemous, the finished product is extremely white and beautiful.
