Lmst

Histoire de l'art en Nouvelle-Grenade (Colombie actuelle) :
"des plafonds peints à Tunja comprennent des images de la flore locale et de la faune étrangère, comme un rhinocéros et des éléphants face à des dieux gréco-romains, basés sur une série d’estampes de Fontainebleau."
19 juin 2025, #INHA, salle Vasari. #Agenda #arthist #histart #artsci

http://blog.apahau.org/seminaire-inha-7-seances-les-jeudis-de-16h-a-18h-a-partir-du-6-mars-2025-la-peinture-dans-les-territoires-des-couronnes-despagne-et-du-portugal-1430-1870-sources-objets-recits-collec/

Kyanite is used in porcelain(more dishware and plumbing than art) but it is used in jewelry. Plus it is an index mineral. But I am going to give the art vote to Dioptase for its unparalleled history as a pigment which stretches back to the Neolithic! For the #MinCup24 semi-finals and the last surviving pigment in competition!

#scicomm #artHist #pigment #mineral

Sterling silver earrings with kyanite and white and blue topaz. Photo courtesy of liveauctioneers.com and Dalshire International. Via https://www.gemsociety.org/article/kyanite-jewelry-and-gemstone-information/

Frontal closeup view of Neolithic sculpture of a human figure face in lime plaster with eyes highlighted in Dioptase from Ain Ghazal , Jordan, from the Musée du Louvre, Paris, via Wikipedia

Pretty blue Kyanite is used in porcelain(though more dishware/plumbing than art) but it is used in jewelry. Points for physics as an index mineral.

But topaz wins the art vote with centuries of gems, carving & jewelry. Plus on the physics front we have its use in lens & xray spectroscopy #MinCup24
#scicomm #minerals #artHist

A collection of kyanite jewelry including a court of eye-shaped pendants, a teardrop pendant and teardrop earrings, one circular and one oval, in gold settings on a tabletop with scattered wood and maple keys via

https://store.anmm.gov.au/blog/the-art-of-styling-kyanite-jewellery-a-stepbystep-guide/

Topaz ring stone
Roman
1st century BCE–3rd century CE
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 171

Hermes holding the kerykeion (herald's staff) and chlamys.
Adaptation of a Greek work of the 4th century B.C.

“Blaze,” a necklace designed by Lester Lampert, features a 97.45-carat ruby topaz gem set in rose gold and surrounded with three-dimensional gold flames that are studded with diamonds.

Via the Field Museum

https://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibitions/grainger-hall-gems

Brooch

Date: 18th century

Culture: Continental

Medium: Silver, silver gilt, topaz, diamonds

Dimensions: 2 1/8 × 2 1/4 in. (5.4 × 5.7 cm)

Classifications: Jewelry, Metalwork-Silver

Credit Line: Gift of Marguerite McBey, 1980

Accession Number: 1980.343.18 via the Met

#MinCup Round 3 Match 3

Don’t fall for this meat rock nonsense! Sure Rhodochrosite is pretty but vote calcite!

Vote for calcite’s gargantuan role in art history - all of marble art and limestone sculpture, chalk drawing, pigment and extender. If you care about art and art history avenge Quartz and defeat Rhodochrosite!

Vote calcite for fossils! Vote calcite for Viking navigation & birefringence!

#scicomm #artHist #calcite #minerals

Fayum Mummy Portrait of a Woman
ca 2nd century A.D.

Medium: Encaustic
Support: Wood
Size: 34.6 x 11.5 cm
Art period: Antiquity
National Gallery of Art
Object number: 1956.12.1

This portrait employs calcite as a pigment. Via https://colourlex.com/project/fayum-mummy-portrait-of-a-woman/

Self-Portrait at the Age of 34 is a self-portrait by Rembrandt, dating to 1640 and now in the National Gallery in London. The painting is one of many self-portraits by Rembrandt, in both painting and etching, to show the artist in a fancy costume from the previous century.

This painting employs chalk, which is calcite

Michelangelo, Moses (ca. 1513–15), for the Tomb of Julius II. Collection of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. The Renaissance marble sculpture depicts buff, bearded, seated Moses (with horns on his head likely based on a description in chapter 34 of Exodus in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible used at that time). It is an extraordinary technical achievement to make flowing hair and lifelike anatomy.

My linocut print on 8” x 8” cream coloured washi paper shows a specimen of rhodochrosite complete with the word “Rhodochrosite” in script in dusky rose. The mineral is printed in tints and shades of dusky rose and cream with some wiggly stripes and irregular concentric rings of colour with the irregular shape of a rock.

Round 3 Match 1 of #MinCup24 is a challenge for my art or physics voting scheme!

Perovskite wins the physics vote with its exciting possible origins in the mantle or even a Brown dwarf + its potential for use in solar panels

Stibnite wins the art vote for kohl, glassmaking & pyrotechnics & as a grey-black pigment for centuries

#scicomm #minerals #artHist #pigments

Two hands hold a red-orange translucent solar panel employing Perovskite up in the air so that the sun can be seen through it with blue sky and tree in the background.

Via: Perovskite Solar Cells: An In-Depth Guide + Comparisons With Other Techs
SOLAR MAG
May 16, 2022 EDT

“This artist's conception illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026. NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes observed the object to learn more about its turbulent atmosphere. Brown dwarfs are more massive and hotter than planets but lack the mass required to become sizzling stars. Their atmospheres can be similar to the giant planet Jupiter's. Spitzer and Hubble simultaneously observed the object as it rotated every 1.4 hours. The results suggest wind-driven, planet-size clouds.” Via Wikipedia

Brown dwarfs could produce Perovskite

The Madonna of the Basket or the Madonna della Cesta is a painting of c. 1524 by Antonio da Correggio in the National Gallery, London. While it is a Mannerist painting of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus, Correggio included naturalist touches in his composition, like the sewing basket that gives the painting its name.

This painting employs stibnite as a pigment.

Spring, M., Grout, R., White, R. '"Black Earths": A Study of Unusual Black and Dark Grey Pigments used by Artists in the Sixteenth Century'. National Gallery Technical Bulletin Vol 24, pp 96–114.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/technical-bulletin/spring_grout_white2003

Stibnite was used by the French Master of Girard Acarie in the grisaille miniatures he painted to illustrate Jacques Le Lieur's Poème sur la Passion.
Ecce Homo ('Behold the man')

“Standing at the top of a staircase, Pontius Pilate presents a scourged Christ, the 'King of the Jews', to a hostile crowd of men who gesture in response. A mantle, mimicking a royal cape, is draped over Christ’s shoulders and he clutches a palm branch instead of a sceptre. His hands are bound, but he does not wear the crown of thorns that is often included in depictions of the subject. The miniature is set within an architectural frame with trees and foliage forming an arch over the scene.”

https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/illuminated/lab/overview-of-artists-materials/antimony-black/type/material

Pretty purple Charoite can be carved but I have to give topaz the art vote for jewelry since ancient times.

Topaz also gets the physics vote for its use in optics and x-ray spectroscopy.

#MinCup24 #scicomm #minerals #arthist

Description

Full: Front

Intaglio; topaz; rectangular; bust of William Pitt to left; edges of stone are faceted; in gold ring.

© The Trustees of the British Museum

Double bow brooch of white openwork woven hair with two hair and gold drops and tassels and with a small gold bow in the centre set with a pink topaz. In original leather box with maker's name on lid. .

© The Trustees of the British Museum

Producer name
Made by: Forrer, A
Production date
1840-1860 (Forrer was at 136 Regent Street from 1840-1860) (Forrer was at 136 Regent Street from 1840-1860)
Production place
Made in: England
Europe: British Isles: England

Swirling purple Charoite sculpture of a cat, made in Russia, 80 mm x 30 mm x 33 mm photographed on a grey and black background via https://mineralartgallery.com/charoite-sculpture-of-a-sacred-cat

Vote calcite for its gargantuan role in art history: all of marble & limestone sculpture, chalk drawing, large amounts of painting as pigment & extender. Vote calcite for fossils! And trilobite eyes!

Sure titanite gets points as an indicator mineral but birefringent calcite gets the physics vote!

#MinCup24 #minerals #calcite #scicomm #artHist

Medium: Oil
Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas
1656 employs calcite.
Support: Canvas
Size: 318 cm x 276 cm
Art period: Baroque
Museo del Prado
Inventory number: P01171
“This renowned canvas depicts the infanta Margarita surrounded by her meninas
(the young noblewomen who attended her), servants, and dwarfs and buffoons (the stunted Mari-Barbola and young Pertusato, harrying the enormous dozing mastiff) in the austere
setting of a palace salon. At the rear of the room a door opens onto a stairway where we see
the backlit figure of a gentleman whose name has survived along with the painting: Don
Jose Nieto. Brush in hand, Velazquez himself stands before an enormous canvas of which
only the back is visible; he seems to gaze questioningly at the spectator, as if it is the viewer
he is painting. The key is found in a mirror with a heavy ebony frame hanging on the wall in
the middle background. Reflected in its silvered surface are the blurred figures of the king
and queen.”

Via Colourlex.com

My linocut print of Mary Anning in green in large coat and bonnet with geological hammer and basket in front of blue lias cliff in silver with fossils she found in silver

is one of a series of my prints of one of the ubiquitous and wildly successful trilobites, prehistoric creatures which lived for hundreds of millions of years, carved by hand in linoleum, printed onto lovely Japanese washi papers and collaged with papers in different colours. This trilobite was a Cheirurus ingricus which lived during the Late Cambrian through the Early Devonian era. This print is on charcoal coloured paper with imbedded fibres, with the trilobite headed down towards the right corner with front and back on sand coloured paper. Each of many segments is on varied washi in pinks, yellows, blues, turquoise, purples, orange, red and more, predominately pale, pastel colours.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, or the Niké of Samothrace, is a votive monument originally discovered on the island of Samothrace, north of the Aegean Sea. It is a masterpiece of Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic era, dating from the beginning of the 2nd century BC (190 BC). It is composed of a statue representing the goddess Niké (Victory), whose head and arms are missing and its base is in the shape of a ship's bow.

The photo shows the now headless winged woman statue in white marble at the Louvre (via Wikipedia)

Both minerals are made into jewelry. Omphacite appeals to me as a marine geophysicist as it’s high pressure subducted oceanic crust but Kyanite is an index mineral…. Kyanite can be a pigment.

But what really sets omphacite apart is its use in artefacts so I have to give it the art vote. #MinCup24

#minerals #scicomm #arthist

Circa 1910
A 14K gold ring is centered with a cornflower blue kyanite (measuring 9.5 x 7.5 x 4.5 mm, approximately 2.47 ct.) surrounded by 11 sparkling bright white old mine cut diamonds (H-I color, mostly VS clarity).
Estimated total diamond weight 1.70 ct
Size of the cluster 15 x 13 (5/8 x 9/16 in.)
Ring size 7.5 (17.5 mm) sizable

Via https://romanovrussia.com/ru/antique/vintage-diamond-kyanite-cluster-engagement-ring/

Maya
7th–9th century

Mexico or Guatemala, Mesoamerica

Culture: Maya

Medium: Jade (jadeite/omphacite)

Dimensions: H. 5 1/2 x 1 1/8 x 1 3/4 in. (14 x 2.8 x 4.5 cm)

Classifications: Stone-Sculpture, Jade

Credit Line: The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979. The Met
“ This is a fragment representing the handle of a Classic Maya (ca. AD 250-900) scepter. Scepters are some of the most important objects shown in royal portraits and found in royal burials. Analysis of the stone classified it as the hard mineral omphacitic jadeitite (composed of the elements silicon, aluminum, calcium, iron, and magnesium). The sculptor subtly created a fleshiness out of the jade by slightly bowing out the vertical lines that connotes a constriction by the horizontal bands lined with a ridge. The scepter terminates in the head of a serpent with round eyeballs, an open mouth with fangs, an upturned snout

Funerary Mask of Yuknoom Ch'een II (Jade, Omphacite, Green Quartz, and diverse Shell)... Calakmul, Late Classic (600-800 AD)

Museo Arqueológico Maya, Fuerte de San Miguel, Campeche, MEXICO

Yuknoom Chʼeen II (September 11, 600 – 680s), known as Yuknoom the Great, was a Maya ruler of the Kaan kingdom, which had its capital at Calakmul during the Classic Period of Mesoamerican chronology. That funeral mask is made with various green stones for the face with red lips, shell eyes with black pupils and whitish crown or headdress.
Via Wikipedia

Quartz easily wins the art vote for #MinCup24

Humans have worked with rock crystal since at least 75000 BCE and Quartz objects are amongst our earliest talisman.

It has been used in art and sculpture and jewelry in its many forms throughout the centuries from antiquity to today. #scicomm #minerals #quartz #arthist

A quartz bead is the featured stone in this ancient Egyptian necklace. The strand
consists of emerald, amethyst, and gold faience (a glazed ceramic). – Robert Weldon,
on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada

Via https://www.gia.edu/rose-quartz-history-lore

Edwardian Amethyst, Diamond, and Pearl Brooch. The large octagonal cut transparent purple amethyst is in a silver setting with curling leaf shaped set with diamonds and pearls in all the cardinal directions. Via https://www.langantiques.com/university/amethyst-2/

This pendant of a rosary dates from the 16th Century. From Mexico, it is made of silver, gilt and rock crystal. It is part of the exhibition "Crystals in Art: Ancient to Today at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art." (Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Marina Abramovic's performance video "Dozing Conciousness" was part of "Crystals in Art: Ancient to Today" at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/DAVID GOTTSCHALK)

The photo shows the silhouette in shadow of a viewer watching the video of Abramovic’s performance where her face emerges from a welter of rock crystals. Via https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/oct/20/is-it-art-20191020/

Both rare mineral pigments in the range of blue-green have long histories in art. #MinCup24

Dioptase was used on Neolithic sculpture & some ancients Asian murals

Vivianite known as “blue ochre” has won my art vote for Egyptian &Roman art, European painting & especially Indigenous art of Pacific NW

#sciart #minerals #scicomm #pigments #artHist

The Procuress (detail)
Johannes Vermeer
1656
Oil on canvas, 143 x 130 cm.
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

“The detail above shows a part of the foreground carpet in Vermeer's Procuress which contains the rare blue pigment vivianite which has faded into a dull grayish green.” The carpet has a blue background with a stylized floral pattern in white, burgundy and a small amount of slate grey. It is draped over a table.

Yeil X’eenh (Raven Screen), ca. 1810, Seattle Art Museum, 79.98

This carved rectangular with curved top and small round opening wooden screen is painted in the colour palette of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest: blue, black and red. (Green is also used elsewhere but not in combination with blue). In the graceful shapes like rounded rectangles common in this art, you see stylized faces and animals including birds, turtle, bear as well as people in the symmetric design.

Rembrandt van Rijn Susanna
1636 , Mauritshuis, The Hague
“Susanna is just about to bathe, when two old men appear from the bushes. She is looking up in alarm –the men behind her on the right are hardly visible in the dark. They try to force Susanna to have sex with them, threatening to spread slander about her.
Rembrandt portrayed Susanna in full light, which makes her appear even more vulnerable in her nakedness. He did not paint an idealised woman, but one of flesh and blood. You can still see the impression left on her calves by her stockings.”

Rembrandt employed Vivianite blue pigment in this painting

the ʿAin Ghazal statues are a number of large-scale lime plaster and reed statues discovered at the archaeological site of ʿAin Ghazal in Amman, Jordan, dating back to approximately 9000 years ago (made between 7200 BC and 6250 BCE),from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period. The image shows two of the sculptured heads in the Jordan museum. They are beige-white with eyes outlined in blue-black Dioptase pigment.

Howlite can be made into jewelry or carved, & it was discovered by a Canadian, Henry How in NS.

But not only has stibnite been used in kohl, glassmaking & pyrotechnics for centuries it is also a grey-black pigment found on Gothic sculpture & 16th century painting so it wins my art vote. #MinCup24

#scicomm #artHist #minerals

A pile of polished irregular Howlite stones in a seashell. The stones are white with grey veins resembling a white version of turquoise. Via https://www.geologyin.com/2024/02/howlite-meaning-properties-uses.html

Opaque colored glass of the 18th Egyptian dynasty with patterns in blue, white and yellow. (a) Small
amphorae (inventory number AF2622; © D. Bagault C2RMF).
(b) Shards (inventory numbers: AF12707 and AF13175; © D. Vigears
C2RMF). These objects come from the Egyptian Antiquities Depart-
ment of the Louvre Museum
"During the 18th Egyptian dynasty (1570–1292
B.C.), opaque white, blue and turquoise glasses were opaci-
fied by calcium antimonate crystals dispersed in a vitre-
ous matrix. ...natural (Sb 2 S 3) or roasted stibnite (Sb 2 O 3 ,
Sb 2 O 4) and metallic antimony are thought to be the main
sources of antimony available during antiquity [3–5]. Our
results suggest that stibnite could have been roasted un-
der controlled conditions entailing the formation of Sb 2 O 3
(∼595◦C) [33], which was used for the ex situ synthesis of
calcium antimonate crystals."

Lahlil, Sophia & Biron, I. & Cotte, Marine & Susini, Jean & Menguy, Nicolas. (2010). Synthesis of calcium antimonate nano-crystals by the 18th dynasty Egyptian glassmakers. Appl. Phys. A. 98. 1-8. 10.1007/s00339-009-5454-1.

“Young Knight in a Landscape, or Portrait of a Knight, is an oil on canvas painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Vittore Carpaccio, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Dated 1510, this is the earliest full-length portrait in Western painting—on the assumption that it is a portrait, as it seems likely…. The painting shows a young knight, surrounded by a rather crowded series of symbols: heron caught in the sky by a hawk, an other knight on horseback with a lance and In the left lower corner is a white ermine and a scroll stating "I prefer to die rather than to incur dishonour" (malo mori quam foedari). Analysis shows Carpaccio used stibnite for the metallic gleam of the knight’s armour.

See: https://www.museothyssen.org/en/restoration/carpaccios-knight

an example of kohl: My linocut of Peseshet, ancient Egyptian woman physician dispensing medicine with hieroglyphs in dark red and blue spelling out her name and profession. Peseshet has dark black kohl around her eyes. Kohl was also viewed as medicinal so apt for this physician.

Also, since titanite is a source of titanium dioxide used as a white pigment in paint since ~1910, I have to give it the art vote over Proustite #MinCup24 Round 1 Match 13

🧵2/2

#pigments #minerals #artHist

As an example of titanium dioxide used in white paint this is “Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian completed in 1943, after he had moved to New York in 1940. Compared to his earlier work, the canvas is divided into many more squares. Although he spent most of his career creating abstract work, this painting is inspired by clear real-world examples: the city grid of Manhattan, and boogie-woogie, an African-American Blues music Mondrian loved.” The white square canvas has an irregular grid of narrow yellow stripes with sporadic squares in white, red and blue, reminiscent of a modern city street map (namely Manhattan). In various places there are various larger rectangles in yellow, white, red and blue, sometimes layered, again reminiscent of a map. Via Wikipedia

Petite correspondance de la panthère héraldique :
https://books.openedition.org/pufr/29472
#arthist #animhist

enluminure de panthère héraldique sur un manuscrit : blanche à pois rouges, bleus et jaunes, griffes rouges, flammes rouges lui sortant de la gueule et des oreilles.

Comment utiliser des références iconographiques fiables quand on est un artiste itinérant à la Renaissance ?
Facile avec cet incroyable livre de modèles (v. 1410) !
#animhist #arthist #MaterialCulture
https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/91010/

Vue d'ensemble : une boite e cuir bouilli dans laquelle sont ragée des "fiches" carrées apparemment cartonnées soit libres, soit multiples et pliées en accordéon, chacune portant 4 dessins à la plume : portrait de types physiques -jeune fille, vieux barbu, christ etc - mais aussi d'animaux

une fiche : 4 têtes d'animaux
chameau, bélier, bouc, sanglier

une fiche : 4 têtes d'animaux
dragon ou griffon, ours mélancolique, cheval tirant la langue (?) chien qui aboie

une fiche :
1 tête d'homme,
1 de femme avec voile blanc
2 animaux : tête d'âne et araignée entière (et franchement bien dessinée)

Immerse in Kuniyoshi's exquisite portrayal of Nichiren's miracle at Reizan. Amid seductive hues, observe the fusion of faith & nature, 1833-37. Thoughts on the Buddhist narrative expressed here?
#UtagawaKuniyoshi #Rijksmuseum #ArtHist