Vivante Drawings

With Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom we can change the color of iron gall ink drawings from brown to black and see, at least vaguely, how the drawings would have originally appeared. When an artist uses iron gall ink it starts out gray, quickly oxidizes to blue-black, and over years changes to brown. It is hard to grasp that so many of the warm brown drawings we know were conceived in black.

Gall Apples on an Oak Tree | Bomarzo

Gall Apple on an Oak Tree | Bomarzo

The color in iron gall ink comes from gall and vitriol–yes, a negative ring. Recipes call for ground wasp’s galls (tannic acid), iron or copper filings (vitriol or sulfuric acid), gum arabic, and water or wine. The photographs of the galls here are on oak trees in Italy.  Galls, also called gall apples, are nests built by wasps for their larvae.  This kind of ink was made in antiquity and again starting in the 13th century. It was the most commonly used ink until the 19th century. Part of its appeal was that it was indelible, unlike carbon ink. Since it eats into the paper, it could not be altered, a positive attribute for scribes with their official documents.

Most old master drawings in brown ink were created with iron gall ink. The other important brown inks are bister and sepia, both of them more stable.  One easy, and unfortunate, way to tell the difference between these inks, is that the iron gall ink bites into the paper, making it look seared or burnt. Some greatly damaged drawings appear lacy with all their holes. In this example by the artist Mola, we can see how the areas with concentrations of ink, especially in the eye and cuff sections, are weakening the paper. This is the action of the acid in the ink.

Pier Francesco Mola (1612 - 1666) | Caricature | Pen and Iron Gall Ink on Cream Laid Paper | 14.7 x 17.8 cm. | National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Ink Corrosion Website details the scope of the problem of deteriorating documents, drawings, and music scores created with iron gall ink and has information on what conservators are doing about it. The excellent site also gives recipes for the ink.

Although it’s rare to see drawings displayed in paintings before the 17th century, there are visual clues as to how paper could be appended to walls. For smaller sheets of paper, dabs of red sealing wax, as in this portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, anchor paper to wall.

Hans Holbein the Younger | Portrait of Georg Gisze (Detail) | Oil on Panel | 1532 | Staatliche Museen | Berlin

Hans Holbein the Younger | Portrait of Georg Gisze | Oil on Wood Panel | 1532 | Staatliche Museen | Berlin

For larger pieces of paper, such as maps, the paper would be affixed to a linen backing and then both hung and weighted with a rod, as in this Vermeer painting in Amsterdam.

Johannes Vermeer | Woman Reading A Letter | 1662-63 | Rijkmuseum | Amsterdam

The map in Vermeer’s painting was made from a few sheets of paper joined together. Paper molds were never longer than arm’s length and so for large projects many sheets would be fastened together.

I just visited the Museo Horne in Florence and saw this 1590 woodcut by Andrea Andreani based on a Domenico Beccafumi design. The woodcut is made up of eight sheets and is framed, but not matted. It appears to be varnished and the frame has no glazing. I haven’t found out when this was framed, but this type of framing, treating the woodcut as if it were a painting, dates back to the early 16th century, when Jacopo de’ Barbari, Dürer, and Titian introduced giant multiple sheet woodcuts.

Andrea Andreani after Domenico Beccafumi | Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law | Woodcut | 1590 | Museo Horne | Florence