Naples yellow
Composition and Properties of Naples Yellow
Naples yellow is lead antimonate Pb3(SbO4)2. Its composition may vary according to the method of preparation.
Names of Naples Yellow
Lead antimonate yellow, antimony yellowPY 41, CI 77588After the city of Naples.Antimony: from Old French antimoine and directly from Medieval Latin antimonium, of obscure origin.From Online Etymology Dictionary
Preparation of Naples Yellow
Naples yellow is one of the oldest synthetic pigments known to Man. It had been prepared by heating a mixture of any of the lead oxides with either antimony oxide Sb2O3 or some other antimony compound. The following is one of the recipes from the book by the Italian miniaturist Valerio Mariani da Pesaro from the beginning of the 17th century copied from an unknown original (2).“You can also make this yellow of a fuller colour and more beautiful by taking 6 ounces of burnt lead and 4 ounces of antimony and one ounce of Afexandrine Tutty and I ounce of salt, and this all mixed together you grind it finely and put it on plates like the others, but vou heat it outside the furnace at the ventilation pipes and if by chance it will not get hot enough you will put if there again until it is done. But if it will come out too much cooked and if there is a fire and it is melted, then you will grind it finely again putting the material back on new plates, you will put it on a lower fire and if necessary one will repeat it several times and this way it will turn out beautifuly.”Lead antimonate occurs naturally as the mineral bindheimite but the pigment had been produced synthetically.
History of Use
Naples yellow had been in use since antiquity until about 1850 (1). The following graph gives the frequency of its use in the paintings of the Schack Collection in the Bavarian State Art Collections in Munich (2).Examples of use
Quote
Let us watch this de Kooning [Dali comment here the 'Woman' paintings, Willem de Kooning painted in the early 1950's] with his prematurely white hair making his great sleepwalker's movements, as though he was waiting in a dream to open bays of Biscay, to explode islands like pieces of orange or Parma violets, to tear continents from a cerulean blue split by oceans of Naples yellow.. ..if by good or by ill fortune, in the middle of this Dionysian demiurg the image of 'The Eternal Feminine' should appear.. ..the least that might have happened to her would be that she should emerge (from all this chaos) wearing nothing but a little make-up. Quote of Salvador Dali in Dali and Me, Catherine Millet, (translation, Trista Selous), Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 8001 Zurich Switzerland, p. 135
Source: Willem de Kooning
Let us watch this de Kooning [leading Abstract-Expressionist painter in New York] with his prematurely white hair making his great sleepwalker's movements, as though he was waiting in a dream to open bays of Biscay, to explode islands like pieces of orange or Parma violets, to tear continents from a cerulean blue split by oceans of Naples yellow.. ..if by good or by ill fortune, in the middle of this Dionysian demiurg the image of 'The Eternal Feminine should appear.. the least that might have happened to her would be that she should emerge (from all this chaos) wearing nothing but a little make-up. Dali's comment on the 'Woman-paintings', c. 1960 [a.o. Woman-III ] of the American abstract-expressionist painter Willem de Kooning: (MPC 75); as cited in Dali and Me, Catherine Millet, (translated by Trista Selous), Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 8001 Zurich Switzerland, p. 135
Source: Salvador Dalí
