EXHIBITION

 

ORPIMENT
2009 - Orpiment, Art Gallery Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia

Orpiment
Orpiment Orpiment
Orpiment
Orpiment Orpiment
Orpiment
Orpiment Orpiment
Orpiment
  Orpiment

 

ORPIMENT

My King I am just like you. This world makes me cry. With lemons, salt and green cap I will go across meadow. There in the yellow sea of orpiment. For sure you already know that orpiment means »gold pigment«. Orpiment - King's Yellow is arsenic trisulfidea artificially made. Originally it was made by powdering the native mineral orpiment. It is very bright yellow; opaque and it works well in oil. Orpiment is very poisonous and not permanent. The native orpiment is said not to be poisonous, or at least not so dangerously, and was freely used in the earliest civilizations. These materials, extensively used throughout the history of art, have become obsolete since the introduction of the cadmium yellows. The artificial varieties were probably introduced in the early eighteenth century.
For a long time orpiment was an immensely exciting commodity for alchemists. If orpiment was gold in colour, went the argument, then it must surely share characteristics with gold, and colour be used for transformations.* Its very name recalls this connection: auripigmentum, »colour of gold«. The ancients thought that orpiment contained gold itself. There is a tale that emperor Caligula extracted pure gold from the mineral Orpiment. Because of his deadly nature they call it arrhenicum (the word arsenic derived from it).The painter used this handsome yellow synthetic orpiment from alchemists laboratory in Renaissance. On the general toxicity scale it is beaten only by its more orange cousin realgar, which is even worse.* There is no keeping company with them, they stay isolated.
And look out for yourself, my dear.

(Natalija Šeruga)

 


* Victoria Finlay; Colour Travels Through the Paintbox, Sceptre, London , 2007, p. 241.

---- Source:
---- - http://www.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/the-geography-of-colorants/the-geography-of-colorants/yellow
---- - http://www.dieter-obrecht.info/pigments/pigments_listing_k.htm#KING%27S%20YELLOW