Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Paintings on Copper (Cambridge and Edinburgh)

Adam Elsheimer
Stoning of Stephen
1603-1604
oil on copper
National Galleries of Scotland

Peter Paul Rubens
Death of Hippolytus
ca. 1611-13
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

"The development of etching and engraving in the sixteenth century must have contributed significantly to the usage and availability of copper plates.  Many artists from this time onwards, such as Brueghel, Rembrandt and Elsheimer, executed etchings and engravings as well as paintings, and would have had easy access to copper plates.  The use of copper as a painting support was in its heyday in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in the Netherlands and Italy, and continued to flourish in the first half of the eighteenth century.  Thereafter, it declined in popularity.  The English writer Robert Dossie stated in 1758 that "such plates are seldom employed but for delicate and elaborate paintings."  

"The main method of manufacture consisted of pouring molten metal into an inclined bed of sand to form cast sheets or ingots.  When cool, the sheets or ingots were subjected to beating with hammers, or rolling  sometimes both  in order to produce the desired thickness.  The earliest known rolling machines appear in Leonardo's notebooks  he shows broad rolls for preparing sheet metal and narrow rolls for shaping staves.  The extent to which rolling machines were used at that time is not known.  As late as the eighteenth century, it seemed that hammers were more commonly used, due to the great difficulty of making the rolling machines."

"The plates were usually sold by coppersmiths who often sold prints and were proof printers.  Occasionally the stamp of a coppersmith can be found on the reverse of a painting.  . . .  Sometimes artists used copper coated with tin, silver, lead or zinc.  . . .  Many of Elsheimer's paintings, and he painted almost exclusively on copper, are on tinned or silvered plates.  The reasons for coating the copper are not clear.  Since a ground was usually applied before the paint film, it was unlikely to have performed an aesthetic function.  Possibly it was thought (wrongly) to help achieve a better bond between the support and the paint layers, or to preserve the copper from corrosion."

– Isabel Horovitz, from Paintings on Copper Supports: Techniques, Deterioration and Conservation, published in The Conservator (vol. 10, no. 1, 1986)

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Cimon and Iphegenia (from Boccaccio)
ca. 1630-50
oil on copper
National Galleries of Scotland

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Landscape with herdsmen and flocks
before 1667
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Adoration of the Kings
before 1667
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Johann König
Adam and Eve in Paradise
ca. 1629
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jan Brueghel the Younger
River scene
before 1678
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Hendrik van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Elder
Judgement of Paris
before 1625
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Sébastien Bourdon
Interior of an inn
ca. 1640
oil on copper
National Galleries of Scotland

Mathys Schoevaerdts
Landscape with pleasure party
before 1684
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Mathys Schoevaerdts
Landscape with hunting party among ruins
before 1684
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Paul Bril
Fantastic landscape
1598
oil on copper
National Galleries of Scotland

Goffredo Wals
Country road by a house
before 1638
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Roelant Savery
Still-life with flowers in a glass berkemeyer, with lizard, frog and dragonfly on a ledge
1637
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge