Advances in painting in early modern Europe were the product not just of artistic innovation but of changes in mining and manufacturing technology.
The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many European oil painters sought ways to depict scenes around them as accurately as possible, with attention to subtle color and the play of light on fabric or metal. While we might think about this trend in terms of cultural shifts and ideas about what makes good art, National Gallery of Art researcher Barbara H. Berrie writes that another angle to consider is…mining. In the early sixteenth century, Berrie writes, Europeans began importing large quantities of silver from the Americas, reducing the incentives to seek the metal out in Europe. So mine operators shifted to a focus on rare metal ores and minerals. This increased the supply of a variety of pigments and other raw materials for paints, which, along with new processing techniques, offered new opportunities for artists. At this time, it was a technical and financial challenge for painters to produce the hues and visual effects they wanted. For example, ultramarine, derived from the lapis lazuli stone, was prized for the deep blue it produced. But because purifying it was a…