Minerals in art

Mineralogy is one of my favourite subjects... I have started my collection of minerals, gems and rocks from around the world.  Minerals are very complex but have also had many other uses.
The use of pigments in art dates back to prehistory.  Until recently, most of these materials were of mineral origin.  Some modern pigments are still mineral-based as their colours continue to outshine those of synthetic alternatives.

Thousands of years ago, when humans began to produce art on cave walls, there were no brushes or palettes, but there were colours made from minerals such as haematite, ochre, limonite and chalk, and from a material of organic origin, charcoal.

Up until 1790 the pencil, the artists basic tool, was just a simple piece of graphite (a natural form of carbon).  Its funny, when I use to suck on my pencil as a child, my parents and teachers use to say "don't do that you will get lead poisoning", now knowing that there is no lead at all in a pencil makes me wonder whether they actually did :)

Many other artists produce their initial drawings with charcoal, just as they had before and how many people still do today.  Thousands of years before our era, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Indians and Chinese already knew how to grind minerals into powder fine enough to form beautiful colours.  They also discovered how to use binding materials with these powders to create forms of paint: water for watercolours and oils for oil painting.  

Sandro Botticelli's painting 'The Birth of Venus' allows us to appreciate the range of colours used by Renaissance artists hundreds of years ago, all made with mineral powders as their base.

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So, lets go through some colours and what minerals they come from:


Blues:

Natural ultramarine blue, one of the most expensive and sought after pigments.  It was obtained from lapis lazuli and was expensive as gold.

Egyptian Blue, which has been in use since since the 5th century BC and is obtained by smelting copper compounds with quartz and calcium. 

Azurrum was the most widely-used blue pigment in European art until the mid 18th century.  It was made from azurite. 


Greens:

Malachite, which is a copper carbonate was ground up to form a brilliant green pigment which was favoured by painters until the 18th century. 


Yellows:

Limonite, Iron oxides were the main sources of yellow pigments.  Limonite was used to create a clear, pale yellow.

Yellow Ochre is used to create a wide range of yellow pigment.


Reds:

Haematite was the first pure mineral used as red for painting.  it appears in bison painted in Spain's Altamira Cave as long as 12,000 BC.

Red ochre consists of iron oxides mixed with clayey earth, creating many rich red colours. 


Whites and Blacks:

The oldest white pigment known as chalk, made from calcite but nowadays it is obtained by mixing finely ground gypsum with water.  The most widely used black pigments as mentioned earlier were not obtained from minerals but from charcoal (from burnt wood).


A great site to check out, and what I used when undertaking a geology unit was: http://webmineral.com/specimens/index.php  it explains each mineral in detail, shows a huge verity of minerals and also has some great pictures to look at the mineral in its natural form.