linseed oil – Wacław Wantuch

Extraordinary oil

“Take your linseed oil and in summer pour it into a bronze or brass basin, or into a bowl, and when the sun is in the sign of Leo, expose it to the sun, and this oil, if you hold it so long, that it will be half gone, will be as perfect as possible for painting” (C. Cennini, “A Treatise on Painting”). Cennino Cennini, born in 1370 in Colle di Val d’Elsa, died […]

Only in exceptional situations do I buy ready-made paint, because I usually paint pictures with paints that I make myself in my studio. I recreate the technologies of the old masters of oil painting. Paints in masterpieces by Rembrandt, da Vinci and Vermeer often contain the same type of earth pigments. In the past, these raw materials were imported along the Silk Road, but today I order them online or look for them in mineral fairs. If I need pigments that were already used in cave painting, then together with geologists we look for them in caves.

I thicken the linseed oil in the sun according to the 14th-century recipe of Cennino Cennini, the author of the “A Treatise on Painting”. Such oil mixed with pigment is an excellent binder used in the glazing technique. Glazing, that is a method of applying multiple layers of semi-transparent paint, was used by the great masters of oil painting for centuries.