I’m going way back in time for this one – back to the 1400s! We’re looking at the palette of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). This has got to be the earliest palette I’ll be able to identify.
InThe History of Watercolour, Marie-Pierre Salé considers Dürer the “first watercolorist,” not because he invented watercolor (people have been painting with pigment suspended in water since cave painting days), but because he’s one of the first Western artists known to have used the medium to its fullest for works of art (rather than incidental illustration of illuminated manuscripts and so forth). Dürer created landscapes and incredibly detailed natural history paintings.
So what was in his palette? What pigments even existed then??
According to “The relationship between Albrecht Dürer’s palette and fifteenth/sixteenth-century pharmacy price lists: the use of azurite and ultramarine”, an article by Andreas Burmester and Christoph Krekel published in Studies in Conservation in 1998: “The pigments used in 13 paintings by Albrecht Dürer have been identified: azurite, ultramarine, verdigris, lead-tin yellow, brown and, occasionally, yellow ochres, cinnabar, red lead, red lakes, basic lead white as well as plant and bone black.”
Let’s see if I can try to translate that into modern pigments.
In the table below, click on the slot name to jump to my suggested alternatives from my Color List, or the modern color name for the Color Spotlight of that color.
| Slot | AD Had | My Modern Pick |
|---|---|---|
| White | Lead White (PW1) | Titanium White (PW6) |
| Middle Yellow | Lead-tin Yellow | Imidazolone Yellow (PY154) |
| Scarlet | Cinnabar | Vermilion Hue (PR188) |
| Middle Red | Red Lead (PR105?) | Pyrrol Red (PR254) |
| Crimson or Magenta | Red Lakes | Quin Rose (PV19) |
| Violet Blue | Ultramarine | Still exists!!! Though this would have been the original version made from Lapis Lazuli, not the modern synthetic Ultramarine Blue (PB29). |
| Cyan | Azurite | Phthalo Blue GS (PB15:3) |
| Green | Verdigris (PG20) | Cobalt Turquoise (PG50) |
| Earth Yellow | Yellow Ochre (PY43) | Yellow Ochre (PY43) still exists!!! |
| Brown | “Brown” ???? | Raw Umber (PBr7) |
| Black | Bone black | Ivory Black (PBk6) |
This is a pretty straightforward palette consisting of mainly shades of primary reds, yellows, and blues, plus black, white, and brown. I had to replace nearly all the colors – I’m glad we now had access to pigments that are cheaper, safer, and stronger!
Hmm. I think your substitutes are probably brighter than what he would have had. For starters, I have a pan of Cinnabar (in a used Kremer set) and it’s… kind of a scabby brownish red. Kremer also seems to have a lead tin yellow (which looks more like PY159 imo, ugh) and an azurite (which actually looks pretty nice to me). And I think I have seen verdigris around somewhere, too, looking duller and greener than the teal PG50 (maybe more towards the light green PG50, then…)
Yeah, these synthetics are totally much brighter. Still, from what I’ve seen of Dürer’s paintings in reproduction, they’re surprisingly bright!