HAA 0050

INTRODUCTION TO MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Units 50 & 51

MEDIA USED IN MEDIEVAL PAINTING and TWO-DIMENSIONAL ART:

Panel Painting

ARTISTS MAKING PANEL PAINTINGS

Marcia paints a portrait
Des femmes nobles et renommées 

Paris, BNF fr. 12420 f. 101v
1403 : Master of Berry's Cleres femmes
PANEL PAINTING TECHNIQUES 

Click here for medieval description
Uses of Panel Paintings 

Iconostasis

Bramble, Minn.

  
Altarpiece on Altar 

In a Domestic Setting 

Amiens, Bibliotheque municipale 
MS Lescalopier 20, f. 275 
c. 1495
Examples of Panel Paintings

Saint Peter (detail)

Sinai: Monastery of St. Catherine
6th c.  encaustic

Virgin and Child with Sts theodore and George

Sinai: Monastery of St Catherine
6th c.  encaustic

The Ladder of Heaven of John Climacus

Sinai: Monastery of St. Catherine
11th-12th c. tempera 

The Virgin of Vladimir 

Moscow: Tretyakov Gallery
12th c.  tempera

Altar Panel 
St. Juliet & St. Quirce with 
Scenes from the Martyrdom of St. Juliet 

Barcelona: Museo d'arte

12th c. tempera 
Wilton Diptych

Front
Back 

 
Siena, Italy: Duomo
Duccio: Maesta Altarpiece, 1305-11

Definitions

Panel painting:  A painting done on a wooden panel  (canvas is not a medium used in the Middle Ages).  Panels may be single, with two hinged sections and folding (diptych), with three sections  (triptych), or more than three sections  (polyptych). Panel painting is common only in the Early Christain and Byzantine periods, and panels continued to be produced in Italy under Byzantine influence.  The medium was much less commonly employed north of the Alps before the Late Middle Ages.

Encaustic:  Painting in which pigments have been mixed with wax, a technique commonly used in the Early Christian period.

Egg tempera:  Paint made from dried pigments mixed with egg yolk and thinned with water.  Used on panel paintings until the fifteenth century.

Gesso:  A primer used on panel paintings, made of either gypsum or chalk, forming a base on which the tempera is applied.  Often mixed with plaster to form raised areas which are commonly stamped with decorative patterns  (e.g., on halos, borders of drapery, etc.).

Pigment:  Basic colors used to make paint.  Medieval pigments are mainly made from earths or from metals heated to various temperatures.
Click here for example of Medieval pigment making procedures.

Gold:  Used in two ways:  either ground to a powder and applied with a paintbrush, or beaten into very thin sheets, applied over a ground of bole  (a clay-like substance containing iron-oxide),  and burnished by rubbing gently with a smooth surface  (a tooth was frequently used for this).


 

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