About Grinding

Abstract

Like the Western European artisans, the iconographers from Southeastern Europe were grinding their materials, according to the needs of different techniques used, in their own workshops. Practice and tradition imprinted into and transmitted through a remarkable collective memory the fact that particle size (especially that of pigments) was very important (for hue, amount consumed, shortening the working time) in the process of making the icons. To emphasize the importance of grinding, in the fourteenth century Cennino Cennini in his “The Craftman’s Handbook” (Cennini, The craftsman’s handbook, 1960) was saying how to do it for cinnabar: “…and grind it with clear water as much as you ever can; for if you were to grind it every day for 20 years, it would still be better and more perfect.” Similarly, Turquet de Mayerne in his seventeenth century manuscript (De Mayerne, Lost secrets of Flemish painting including the first complete English translation of the De Mayerne Manuscript, 2001) describes how different colors have to be ground and in which medium (water, oil, etc).