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Green earth<\/a>, sometimes called terra verte<\/em>, has been around for as long as there\u2019s been painting, but it found its claim to fame as the universal tone for underpainting<\/a> flesh in the late medieval (and early Renaissance) era. Have you noticed how people in medieval paintings sometimes look a little\u2026 sick? If so, you\u2019ve probably identified the tell-tale greyish-greenish hue of green earth peeking through. After the fragile pale pinks fade away, green earth emerges, revealing these as medieval era paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what I (Maggie, Team Green\u2019s green earth extraordinaire) found so cool about this pigment: it\u2019s not the most glamorous color, but its lasting visibility cues us into the unique practices of medieval artists and artisans in the modern day. So, even though it\u2019s not as common in medieval manuscripts, it\u2019s certainly a star player in the medieval decoration game and the history of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, as we set on the journey of making green earth, consider it as such: an exploration of the spirit of medieval craftsmanship through an unexpected, but important, muddy green.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the medieval era, making green earth was both simple and cheap. In fact, artisans have made ancient earth pigment<\/em>s like green earth for thousands of years by crushing a colorful mineral and washing it until a fine, saturated pigment powder remains. Green earth requires either glauconite or celadonite, two nearly identical<\/a> iron-rich minerals found in deposits around Europe and the Mediterranean with both crystalline and stone forms.\u00b9 For our experiment, we used celadonite stones, because our professor easily sourced them from the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This all sounds pretty easy. It\u2019s so<\/em> easy, in fact, that most medieval craftsmen didn\u2019t bother writing the process down. And finding a recipe wasn\u2019t the only challenge green earth gave us. Celadonite is an unexpectedly hard mineral: according to Introduction to Manuscript Studies, <\/em>it was often too \u201cdifficult to grind up fine enough to use for illumination.\u201d\u00b2 Whether we knew it or not (we didn\u2019t\u2013read your sources closely), we had our work set out for us, especially if we wished to test it on parchment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After piecing together our own recipe from both medieval (shoutout Cennino Cennini for the lengthy Craftsman\u2019s Handbook<\/em>)\u00b3 and modern reconstructed sources,\u2074 we finally began making our green earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, we placed a small handful of celadonite rocks into a brass mortar and pestle to start grinding. Surprisingly enough, this was when we realized that choosing celadonite may have been, in fact, a mistake. The grinding process lasted the entire class period and persisted into a second: over two hours of just grinding! It was bleak, where malachite and verdigris had been so easy.<\/p>\n\n\n Remember what I was saying about experiencing medieval craftsmanship? As I sat baking under the hot Athens sun\u2013an English major with a mortar and pestle in my hands, of all things, trying to crush a bunch of impossibly hard, tiny green rocks\u2013I really started feeling it. I thought about how long it took to make only this one pigment, how laborious the work was, and then how colorful all of the manuscripts we had seen were. This was just one tiny step. My arms hurt, and a blister was forming by my thumb, but we bravely survived the sufferings of the illuminator!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having reduced most of it to a powder, we picked out a few stubborn chunks and decided it was sufficiently ground.<\/p>\n\n\n Next, we \u201cwashed\u201d the newly ground celadonite powder, a process meant to refine the material by lifting the finest, most colorful pieces out. We did this by transferring the powder into a smaller, porcelain mortar and pestle and then adding a bit of distilled water. Then, I slowly stirred up the finer particles by gently grinding with the pestle. Leaving just a few seconds to allow the heavy sediment to settle, I then poured the muddy liquid into a jar. We repeated this process until we had three jars full of water and celadonite powder. (Ideally, this process would be repeated until no sediment was left in the mortar, but after washing what we deemed a sufficient amount of powder, we ended the process for time.)<\/p>\n\n\n We waited a few minutes to allow all the sediment to separate and settle at the bottom before pouring out the water, leaving behind a dark, muddy green sludge. Our professor took the jars to evaporate between class periods, which turned the swampy sludge into a lighter, olive-y green powder that we brushed out into a small bowl. Finally, real pigment!<\/p>\n\n\n We waited a few minutes to allow all the sediment to separate and settle at the bottom before pouring out the water, leaving behind a dark, muddy green sludge. Our professor took the jars to evaporate between class periods, which turned the swampy sludge into a lighter, olive-y green powder that we brushed out into a small bowl. Finally, real pigment!<\/p>\n\n\n Turning pigment powder into something paintable just requires mixing with a binder. On our pigment-testing day, we added egg glair<\/a>, the most common binder for illuminating medieval manuscripts made from whipped and separated egg whites. There was no exact measuring to this step; we just dropped in bits of glair and celadonite until the mixture reached a paint-like consistency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And thus, there it was! Green earth\u2013and probably the most down-to-earth green earth ever. The color was as expected: a dull, natural olive green. The surprising part was its light consistency. Even after putting my heart and soul into the grinding, the celadonite particles were still too large to make a rich, dense paint, instead looking more like a watercolor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back, a few changes in process could have refined our grainy wash into real paint. First, the material: we could have swapped our celadonite stones for their crystalline counterpart, or even glauconite\u2013anything that grinds finer. We also could have \u201cmulled<\/a>\u201d the celadonite powder on a flat surface before mixing the paint, refining the pigment even further. Finally, we could have leaned more into its traditional context: instead of egg glair on parchment, egg yolk (which makes tempera<\/em> paint) on panel might have done the trick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though the paint wasn\u2019t exactly what we expected, we still see our green earth pigment as a win for Team Green. Though it took a lot of time to make something that looks quite plain, following the steps of hundreds of generations of artists felt profound, making the whole process pretty exciting. And whenever one of us steps into an art museum, we\u2019ll always be able to point out this subtle yet unmistakable piece of medieval history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00b9 Howard, Helen. Pigments of English Medieval Wall Painting<\/em>. London, Archetype Books, 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00b2 Clemens, Raymond, and Timothy Graham. Introduction to Manuscript Studies<\/em>. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00b3 Cennini, Cennino, and Daniel V. Thompson. The Craftsman\u2019s Handbook: The Italian Il Libro Dell\u2019arte<\/em>. New York, Dover Publications, 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2074 Medlej, Joumana. Inks & Paints of the Middle East: A Handbook of Abbasid Art Technology<\/em>. Majouna, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2074 WoodlandsTV. \u201cAncient Art: Making Earth Pigments.\u201d YouTube, 18 Sept. 2019, www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6k8JEEP0QNg. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Author: Maggie Yarbrough<\/p>\n\n\n\n Featured image: student paints with green earth<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my Team Green-mates had already made the three biggest greens in medieval manuscripts\u2014verdigris, malachite, and organic (plant) greens\u2014it was time to think outside the…<\/p>\nGetting Started<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Recipe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>Results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nFootnotes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nCredits<\/h2>\n\n\n\n