Tuesday 13 January 2015

Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l'eau


I sent myself an email in May (MAY!) of last year with a link to this fascinating book, meaning to share it here because it's so beautiful and, well, OLD. Here we are, eight months later, and I am finally getting round to it!

This wonderful thing was painstakingly put together by a Dutch artist called A. Boogert in 1692 - almost 800 pages of handwritten and handpainted investigation into the precise mixing of colour and pigment. It's just the sort of thing that pushes my buttons! Colour blocks... so simple (and familiar to us now) but so visually pleasing.

All of the pages have been made available to view here (what a fantastic resource, no?) and there's some good information on it in this post by medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel here. Thanks to this post for reminding me!

2 comments:

éva-mona said...

What a fantastic book! Well... quel livre fantastique !

Blue Eyed Night Owl said...

Wow, that really is great! And how convenient that you can view it online:) Although I bet it's even better in real life!