Pigments in sixteenth-century European painting Marika Spring,
Scientific Department, National Gallery, London Making Art in
Tudor Britain Abstracts from Academic Workshops (2007-8) Funded
by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Over the last few
years, as part of the programme for revision of the scholarly
catalogues, full technical examinations have been carried out on
many of the sixteenth-century German, Netherlandish and Italian
School paintings in the National Gallery. The results of
analysis give a good overview of the pigments in sixteenth-
century European paintings, which could provide a context in
which to place the results from the Tudor paintings project.
Many pigments were available all over Europe. However, it is
interesting to consider whether there are distinct geographical
characteristics in the way in which they were used, or whether
local materials not available everywhere can be identified. The
pattern of use of blue pigments confirmed what had already been
established; for example the