Workshop
The Painting Workshop of Old Masters
The inspiration for this publication stems from my long-standing fascination with the paintings of old masters. My research into their work and my admiration for the sublime atmosphere of their pieces-with their harmonious composition, perfect lines, and colors-raised questions about how these masters achieved such exceptional artistic effects. What techniques and materials did they employ to create such masterful works?
I began researching, experimenting, and reconstructing historical workshop procedures in 2002. Utilizing over twenty years of painting and conservation experience, I have identified, examined, and reconstructed the painting techniques and technologies, as well as the materials and workshop practices of Raphael, Leonardo, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Johannes Vermeer. I conducted research and technological-painting trials and analyzed the results of optical and physicochemical studies of many original paintings. The scientific conservation reconstructions of paintings presented here are the result of these research processes and the application of reverse technology. The creation of nearly thirty works allowed for their examination, verification, and supplementation of existing knowledge about the secrets of old masters’ painting workshops. A novelty is the use of reverse technology as a transdisciplinary comparative method, utilizing my own latest results from optical and physicochemical studies, taking into account selected research results from European and American museums.
The creation of original reconstructions of paintings, whose structure and chemical composition are as close as possible to the originals, allowed for a more precise definition of their creation process also based on many recipes for painting techniques and technologies developed by me. The result is a substantive and fully professional analysis of the creation of old master masterpieces in terms of technology, workshop practices, and in a sense, psychology. The results of multidisciplinary research allow us to determine to what extent the image of both existing and lost paintings can be recreated and to what extent their original character – the state in which the old masters saw them at the moment of their completion – can be restored.
The pigments and painting materials I used exactly correspond to those employed by the old masters. Currently, they are hardly used due to forgotten and complicated extraction methods, and their high cost. The basic painting palette used by the aforementioned old masters consisted of natural ultramarine, azurite, fluorite, verdigris, copper resinate, lead-tin yellow type I, cinnabar, red and yellow organic dyes, natural earths, carbon black and lead white. The group of less frequently used materials includes colorless glass, orpiment, minium, and metallic bismuth, which do not fall within the canon of painting materials used during the late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento. Powdered, colorless glass was used by Raphael with many pigments, which is an original and fundamental characteristic of his painting technology. A key task, requiring many technological-painting trials, was the laboratory development of copper resinate which is characterized by a beautiful color and resistance to decolorization. I also conducted a reconstruction of the composition and color structure of the flesh tones in the context of the transformation of the Late Renaissance Florentine manner understood as underpaintings executed with green earth and verdaccio on a system of greenish-brown layers, utilizing the transparency of the gypsum ground. As a result of the research, I also developed a method for preparing supports, gypsum ground (gesso sottile), chalk ground, and glue isolation which played an important technological role in the construction of paintings by Raphael, Leonardo, and Cranach.
The word tempera derives from the Latin word temperare , meaning to mix or combine liquids. In the Middle Ages, this term referred to all lean and fat binders, regardless of composition, whether mixed with water or not. Any technique involving a binder was called tempera. The currently used word emulsion, meaning tempera, most often referred to the emulsifying nature of the binder. A very important technological problem was developing a recipe for so-called fat tempera (tempera grassa), which is not mentioned in either ancient or contemporary written sources.
The issue of oil painting binders used at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries is still not fully understood. Oil painting and cooked resins were known a hundred years before Van Eyck, and glazes existed since the time of Apelles, proving that oil itself as a binder did not yet determine the emergence of a new, more perfect painting technique during that period. The techniques of the old masters were not immutable; individual types gradually evolved according to the needs of subsequent generations of artists who perfected them, proceeding with full autonomy. It became necessary to reconstruct oil and oil-resin binders whose composition is as close as possible to those used by the old masters, and which were also used in the development of imprimatura , serving both an aesthetic and technological role. During the Renaissance, varnishes as we understand them today were unknown; instead, paintings were covered with layers of thick oil-resin or oil mixtures, commonly called pokosty (varnishes/oils). Varnishing paintings, often done hot, corresponded to today’s varnishing. The Lucca Manuscript, along with other written sources, mentions resins such as mastic and sandarac, dissolved in linseed oil, forming thick mixtures, naturally applied hot.
The brush is a very important tool. Ideally, it should be made of natural bristles (e.g., sable, badger, silk threads). Natural brushes allow for extremely precise lines, smooth texture, and subtle tonal transitions found in old master paintings.
At the beginning of the 16th century, the structural function of the frame was as important for a painting as its decorative function. The painting and its frame should form a stylistically unified whole. Therefore, I also engage in the design and creation of unique frames. I have the capability to create rich carved elements and in the pastiglia dorata technique. I apply gilding with 24-karat gold and silver using historical bolus and mordant techniques.
Dr. Łukasz Nawrocki
May 2025
