Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract

It is argued here that painters of the
Baroque adhered to the die-hard tra­
dition of loading their palettes with
a limited number of tints, suitable
only for painting the passage they
planned to finish in that stage of the
work. Support for this proposition
comes from various directions: writ­
ten sources, studio representations,
and scientific research generated by
different methods. An example of a
specific studio practice is used to
demonstrate the much discussed in­
terrelation of technique and style.

196

Reflections on the Relation between Te chnique

and Style: The Use of the Palette by the

Seventeenth-Century Painter

Ernst van de Wetering

Kunsthistorisch Instituut

Herengracht 286

1016 BX Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Introduction

In the Vitae, as is widely known, Giorgio Va sari attempted to describe the

development of Italian art from Giotto onward as a process of continuous

progress culminating in the work of Michelangelo. The idea that art changes

because better solutions appear was certainly not restricted to Va sari. While

stylistic developments in We stern art were viewed as a matter of progress, it

was inevitable that the characteristics of earlier styles would be explained in

relation to problems that had meanwhile been solved. This could apply to

the invention of perspective and to the invention of oil painting-which,

according to Va sari, "softens and sweetens the colors and renders them more

delicate and more easily blended than do the other mediums" (1). Finally, the

development of style can be applied within oil painting to the development

of the technique fo r achieving a "'glowing" incarnate, as Karel van Mander

termed it, by means of an underpainting in vermilion that "glows more

fleshy" (2).

Viewed thus, there can be said to exist a clear relation between style and

technique. During the nineteenth century, however, this was a hotly debated

issue among art theorists. Some of these, especially writers on architecture

such as Gottfr ied Semper (1803-1879) and Viol1et-le-Duc (1814-1879),

aimed to demonstrate a fu ndamental interrelation of style and technique in

the arts (3). Twentieth-century developments, such as the theories underlying

the Bauhaus, continued to build on the same ideas.

Not everyone agrees that style and technique are interrelated. A parallel

stream of art history adheres to the idea, current since the Romantic period,

that every fo rm of art had its own fo rmal legitimacy. In this way of thinking,

it was not necessary to explain styles in terms of technical limitations and

possibilities. This line of thought culminated in the concept of Kunstwollen,

originated by Alois Riegl (1858-1905), which was seen as the manifestation

of an "urge to fo rm," independent of the restrictive influence of such fa ctors

as function, materials, and technique. All the same, Riegl did not deny the

influence of technique. He believed, however, that Kunstwollen overcame the

technical limitations. Te chnical frontiers, considered by Semper to playa pos­

itive part in the creative process, constituted in Riegl's view a "coefficient of

fr iction" within the Gesamtprodukt of Kunstwollen (4).

It could be argued that Riegl's notion of Kunstwollen was partly responsible

fo r the fact that "style" has so long remained one of the main domains of art

historical research, with art historians such as Wollflin and Focillon being

prominent representatives of this direction. It is worth noting here that the

stylistics ofWollflin were dominated by an outlook in which the autonomous

or even abstract qualities of the visual vocabulary took priority over the

pictorial means employed to achieve a convincing representation of reality.

Since Wollflin's times, research into artistic techniques has become more and

more detached from stylistic considerations. Owing to the shift towards sci-

This article was previously published, in a different form, in Oud Holland 107: 1, 1993,

137-51; and in KM, vakil'!for 111 atie voor beeldende Kunstenaars en res fa rato ren, Fall 1994,

28-31; reprinted, with changes, by permission of the author.

Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice