Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled “Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice” at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam.

Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.

• Foreword
• Preface
• Beyond a Collection of Data: What We Can Learn from Documentary Sources on Artists’ Materials and Techniques
  Leslie A. Carlyle
• An Integrated Approach for the Study of Painting Techniques
  Sylvana Barrett, Dusan C. Stulik
• Varnish, Grounds, Viewing Distance, and Lighting: Some Notes on Seventeenth-Century Italian Painting Technique
  Helen Glanville
• From Books of Secrets to Encyclopedias: Painting Techniques in France between 1600 and 1800
  Ann Massing
• The Roberson Archive: Content and Significance
  Sally A. Woodcock
• Libro Secondo de Diversi Colori e Sise da Mettere a Oro: A Fifteenth-Century Technical Treatise on Manuscript Illumination
  Arie Wallert
• A Seventeenth-Century Italian Treatise on Miniature Painting and Its Author(s)
  Erma Hermens
• Questions about Medieval Gesso Grounds
  Beate Federspiel
• Aspects of Painting Technique in the Use of Verdigris and Copper Resinate
  Renate Woudhuysen-Keller
• Connections and Coincidences: Three Pigments
  Josephine A. Darrah
• An Investigation of Palette and Color Notations Used to Create a Set of Tibetan Thangkas
  Kate I. Duffy, Jacki A. Elgar
• New Evidence for the Medieval Production of Icons in the Nile Valley
  Zuzana Skalova
• Techniques of the Romanesque and Gothic Wall Paintings in the Holy Sepulchre Chapel, Winchester Cathedral
  Helen C. Howard
• The Polychromy of Exeter and Salisbury Cathedrals: A Preliminary Comparison
  Eddie Sinclair
• Andrea Mantegna’s Adoration of the Magi
  Andrea Rothe
• Technical Examinations of Titian’s Venus and Adonis: A Note on Early Italian Oil Painting Technique
  Ulrich Birkmaier, Arie Wallert, Andrea Rothe
• Gerard David’s St. Anne Altarpiece: Evidence for Workshop Participation
  Catherine A. Metzger, Barbara H. Berrie
• Maarten van Heemskerck and Jan van Scorel’s Haarlem Workshop
  Molly Faries, Christa Steinbüchel, and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer
• Style and Technique in Dutch Landscape Painting in the 1620s
  E. Melanie Gifford
• Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) and His Use of Perspective
  Jørgen Wadum
• A Technical Study of the Materials and Methods Used by the Painters of the Latvian Churches in the Seventeenth Century
  Ilze Poriete, Dace Choldere
• William Holman Hunt and the “Pre-Raphaelite Technique”
  Melissa R. Katz
• Paul Delaroche: A Case Study of Academic Painting
  Jo Kirby, Ashok Roy
• Painting Techniques and Materials of Turner and Other British Artists 1775–1875
  Joyce H. Townsend
• Art for Art’s Sake: The Materials and Techniques of James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)
  Stephen Hackney
• Painting on a Photographic Substrate: Notes Regarding Materials and Techniques over the Past 100 Years
  John R. Gayer
• Reflections on the Relation between Technique and Style: The Use of the Palette by the Seventeenth-Century Painter
  Ernst van de Wetering
• Index of Contributors