AIC's 47th Annual Meeting

In the seventeenth century, the arsenic sulfide pigment orpiment had a notorious reputation in contemporary sources for its bad handling qualities, poor lightfastness, toxicity, and instability when used with lead- or copper-containing pigments. Therefore, it was typically used as a localized final layer. In still life painting, this meant that the pigment was usually limited to the final layers of lemons and yellow roses. However, a recent treatment and technical study of the painting Fruit Still Life by Cornelis de Heem (1631-1695) at the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis revealed this was not always the case. Through close inspection, cross-section microscopy, SEM-EDX, and MA-XRF scanning, several distinctive technical markers, including an exceptional use of orpiment, were discovered for this artist. Using the findings of this study and what is known about still life painting practice in 17th-century Netherlands, an attempt will be made to fit this painting within a larger context. Unlike his contemporaries, de Heem used this pigment despite its many undesirable qualities. This included mixing with lead white in the wings of a white butterfly, verditer in the leaves, and iron oxides and vermilion in grape stems. He also used it in details in the painting, such as in the delicate wheat stalks. This shimmering yellow pigment was seen all over the surface of the painting and confirmed by MA-XRF scanning. Examination of paintings by de Heem from other collections confirmed this atypical use of orpiment is throughout his oeuvre. It is very unusual compared to other flower still life artists, like his well-known father and teacher, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, who indeed only made limited use of the pigment. The reasons why Cornelis de Heem might have used this pigment extensively will be considered. De Heem must have painted this work during his period in The Hague, between 1676 and 1690. During the technical study, a cross-section revealed the ground contained distinctive, translucent, silica particles surrounded by a ring of bright orange clay. This material was previously identified in the eleven paintings of the cycle by Giovanni Pellegrini made for the Mauritshuis’s Golden Room, as well as several other paintings in the museum’s collection. From art historical context, each painting identified with this type of ground is known to have been painted in The Hague, which points to a local mineral source for these grounds. Due to the presence of a similar ground in the de Heem, it can be included in this group, thus narrowing down the dates of the work’s creation to those when he lived in The Hague. This ground can function as a possible marker for this period of his career and could inform further studies of his other undated paintings. The discovery of de Heem’s unusual use of orpiment and the painting’s distinctive ground made for a meaningful study of this artist’s painting technique. Not only is this important for the documentation of paintings by this artist, but it also challenges the idea that 17th-century Northern painters were always made limited use of orpiment.