Lead-tin-yellow
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Lead-tin yellow is a yellow
pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...
, of historical importance in
oil painting Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...
, sometimes called the "Yellow of the Old Masters" because of the frequency with which it was used by those famous painters.


Nomenclature

The name lead-tin yellow is a modern label. During the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries when it was in widest use, it was known by a variety of names. In Italy, it was ''giallorino'' or ''giallolino''. In other countries of Europe, it was massicot, (Spanish), (German), ''general'' (English) or (Portuguese). All of these names were often applied to other yellow pigments as well as lead-tin yellow.


Composition

Lead-tin yellow historically occurred in two varieties. The first and more common one, today known as "Type I", was a lead stannate, an
oxide An oxide () is a chemical compound containing at least one oxygen atom and one other element in its chemical formula. "Oxide" itself is the dianion (anion bearing a net charge of −2) of oxygen, an O2− ion with oxygen in the oxidation st ...
of
lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...
and tin with the
chemical formula A chemical formula is a way of presenting information about the chemical proportions of atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound or molecule, using chemical element symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, such as pare ...
Pb2SnO4. The second, "Type II", was a
silicate A silicate is any member of a family of polyatomic anions consisting of silicon and oxygen, usually with the general formula , where . The family includes orthosilicate (), metasilicate (), and pyrosilicate (, ). The name is also used ...
with the formula .Hermann Kühn, 1967, "Blei-Zinn-Gelb und seine Verwendung in der Malerei", ''Farbe und Lack'' 73: 938-949 Lead-tin yellow was produced by heating a powder mixture of
lead oxide Lead oxides are a group of inorganic compounds with formulas including lead (Pb) and oxygen Oxygen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group (periodic table), gr ...
and tin oxide to about 900 °C. In "Type II" the mixture also contained
quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...
. Its hue is a rather saturated yellow. The pigment is opaque and lightfast. As a type of
lead paint Lead paint or lead-based paint is paint containing lead. As pigment, lead(II) chromate (, "chrome yellow"), lead(II,IV) oxide, (, "red lead"), and lead(II) carbonate (, "white lead") are the most common forms.. Lead is added to paint to acceler ...
, it presents the hazard of
lead poisoning Lead poisoning, also known as plumbism and saturnism, is a type of metal poisoning caused by lead in the body. Symptoms may include abdominal pain, constipation, headaches, irritability, memory problems, infertility, numbness and paresthesia, t ...
if ingested, inhaled, or contacted.


History

The origin of lead-tin yellow can be dated back to at least the thirteenth century when Type II was applied in
fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...
s, perhaps having been discovered as a by-product of crystal glass production. Until the eighteenth century, Type I was the standard yellow used in oil painting. Lead-tin yellow was widely employed in the
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
by painters such as
Titian Tiziano Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian Renaissance painter, the most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. Ti ...
('' Bacchus and Ariadne''), Bellini ('' The Feast of the Gods'') and
Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...
('' Sistine Madonna''), and during the
Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...
period by
Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...
('' Belshazzar's Feast''), Vermeer ('' The Milkmaid''), and
Diego Velázquez Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptised 6 June 15996 August 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the Noble court, court of King Philip IV of Spain, Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He i ...
('' Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan''). In the early eighteenth century, lead-tin yellow was almost completely replaced in use by Naples yellow. After 1750, no paintings seem to have been made containing the pigment, and its existence was eventually forgotten for reasons that are not entirely clear. Lead-tin yellow was rediscovered in 1941 by the German scientist Richard Jakobi, then-director of the Doerner Institute. Jakobi called it ''Blei-Zinn-Gelb''; the English "lead-tin yellow" is a literal translation of the German term. After 1967, Hermann Kühn in a series of studies proved its general use in the traditional oil technique of earlier centuries, coining the distinction between the Type I and Type II varieties.H. Kühn, "Lead-Tin Yellow", 1968, ''Studies in Conservation'' 13(1): 7-33


Conjecture about disappearance

One prominent hypothesis for its disappearance from collective memory is confusion with other yellow pigments like massicot. Lead-tin yellow was sometimes called massicot, although it is a different substance. Prior to the development of modern analytical tools allowing for microscopic testing of paint, it was not always possible for
art historians The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetics ...
to distinguish between similar pigments, meaning that most yellow pigment containing lead was generally labeled Naples yellow. Increased use of other pigments such as the less-opaque Naples yellow may also have displaced lead-tin yellow in common use. During the nineteenth century, after lead-tin yellow had vanished from common use, newer inorganic yellow pigments came into use, such as chrome yellow ( lead chromate), cadmium sulfide, and cobalt yellow.


See also

*
List of inorganic pigments The following list includes commercially or artistically important inorganic pigments of natural and synthetic origin.. Purple pigments Aluminosilicate pigments * Ultramarine violet (): a synthetic or naturally occurring sulfur containing silica ...


References

{{Reflist


Further reading

* Nicholas John Eastaugh, Lead tin yellow: its history, manufacture, colour and structure. University of London, 1988. Inorganic pigments Lead compounds Stannates