for many renaissance painters
watercolor was the medium of choice for
capturing the world in fine detail
watercolor paint is made of pigment
particles mixed with a binder like gum
arabic or animal glue in water
today watercolor artists mix water with
ready-made paint and apply it to paper
creating a transparent wash
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but during the renaissance artists used
watercolour paint in a number of ways to
create a variety of objects
illuminated manuscripts
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portrait miniatures
and coloured drawings
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artists chose to use watercolor
deliberately rather than another medium
like oil
for its technical properties and the
effects it produced
illuminated means to give light artists
used watercolor for illuminated
manuscripts
as it reflects light creating the
desired luminosity for these books
illuminated manuscripts were often
decorated with small scale paintings in
minute detail
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watercolor can be applied with a very
fine brush and with precision to create
this detail
another practical advantage of
watercolor is that the paint dries very
quickly
unlike oil which can take up to a year
to fully dry
so the pages could be bound without
danger of them sticking together
and once dried watercolour on parchment
is more pliable than oil
so the manuscript pages could be easily
flexed and turned
without cracking the paint layers
renaissance artists also preferred
watercolor for painting portrait
miniatures
tiny images that could be held in the
hand
in an age before photography miniatures
were used to accurately depict a
person's appearance
often a loved one as watercolor paint
reflects more light than oil paint
it was used to give a purer brighter and
more lively appearance to the sitter
miniaturists were called limnas which
means those who give light
perhaps the most famous renaissance
limna nicholas hilliard
painted this miniature of his wife alice
in 1578
here you can see areas of opaque body
colour
this is also watercolour paint but it is
made using a higher proportion of
pigment to binder
to achieve rich and smooth areas of
colour that are not transparent
hilliard would have painted this
miniature directly from life in several
stages
layer by layer the advantage of using
watercolor
is that each layer would dry quickly
enough for the painter to move on to the
next stage of the painting
after applying the main areas of colour
hilliard would have added fine details
to capture his wife's likeness
watercolour enabled hilliard to paint
these details at this incredibly small
scale
jacques lemoyne de morg was one of the
many 16th century artists
who chose to use watercolor to record
the natural world
he would have used watercolor to paint
objects like this because it enabled him
to capture the true-to-life colours of
the fruit immediately
the way he painted has the most
similarities with what we think of as
watercolour painting today
you can see here that lamoin used black
chalk to draw the rough outline of the
leaf
watercolor artists today often start
with a sketched outline too
using pencil
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lemoine would have made the watercolor
paint himself by grinding the pigment
and mixing it with powdered gum arabic
by doing this himself
he could vary the consistencies of the
paint
in some places you can see he used more
roughly ground paint with large pigment
particles to create
texture with pre-ground paint
most watercolorists today create texture
in other ways
here a modern day artist uses a
relatively dry brush to produce a
stippling effect to mimic the interior
texture of a pomegranate
to show highlights lemoine used a
variety of techniques
he made the white highlights of the
pomegranate stem with white body color
opaque watercolor paint but he created
the highlights on the red seeds
by simply leaving the white paper
underneath unpainted
this is a technique that watercolor
artists continue to use
seen here on both the outside of this
pomegranate and on the seeds
today watercolor remains a versatile
medium
ideal for capturing lifelike details
that help us to record and understand
our diverse and colorful world
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you