The Historical Texts from which descriptions of pigments are taken including Web Archive texts
Alcherius, Jehan. Experiments Upon Colours. Late 14th to early 15th centuries. In “Bolognese Manuscript” of Jehan le Begue in Merrifield, Mary P.. Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Art of Painting. Original Texts with English Translations. London: John Murray, 1849. New York: Dover Publications, 1967.
Anonymous, “A Tract on the Art of Painting / Tractado del arte de la pintura”, c. 1656, by a pupil of Mateo Núnez de Sepúlveda (1611-1660). In Zahira Veliz, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain. Six Treatises in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Armenini, Giovanni Battista. De veri precetti della pittura, 1586. On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting. Edward J. Olszewski, editor and translator from the Italian. New York: Burt Franklin and Company, 1977.
Aristotle, Meteorology, Book III.
Baldinucci, Filippo. Vocabolario Toscano dell’Arte del Disegno. Florence, 1681.
Bate John. The Third Booke of Drawing, Limming, Colouring, Painting and Graving, in The Mysteryes of Nature and Art. London, 1634. Web archive: 17th Century Colour Paletttes.
Berger, Ernst. Quellen für Maltechnik während der Renaissance und deren Folgezeit (XVI.-XVIII. Jahrhundert), Munich: G.D.W. Callwey, 1901. The Turquet de Mayerne manuscript. (Reference only)
Binet. Etienne. See François, René.
Bolognese Manuscript of Jehan le Begue. In Merrifield, Mary P. Medieval and Renaissance Treatises. Original Texts with English Translations. London: John Murray, 1849. New York: Dover Publications, 1967.
Borghini, Raffaello. Il Riposo/ The Rest, Florence, 1584. English translation by Lloyd H. Ellis, Jr: Raffaello Borghini’s Il Riposo. University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Boutet, Claude. Traité de la peinture en miniature. Paris, 1708. The Art of Painting in Miniature, London, 1739.
Boyle, Robert. Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours. London, 1664. (Reference only) Online: The Project Gutenberg penelope.uchicago.edu/
Brenner, Elias. Chart: Trilingual Nomenclature and Genuine Samples of the Simple Colours Most Made Use of by Miniature Painters, published for those who practice this art by E. Brenner, Stockholm, 1680. Chart: culturevore: visual archive of colour systems.
Carducho, Vicente. “Dialogues on Painting / Dialogos de la Pintura”, 1633. In Zahira Veliz, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain. Six Treatises in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Cennini, Cennino d’Andrea. Il Libro dell’Arte. Florence, July 1437. The Craftsman’s Handbook. Daniel V. Thompson, Jr., translator. Princeton: Yale University Press, 1933; New York: Dover Publications, 1954/
Cooper, Samuel. Authentic Display of the Colours, 1634. In Turquet de Mayerne, Painting, Sculpture and of the Lesser Arts, 1634. Sloane 2052, The British Museum, London.
Davy, Sir Humphrey. “Some Experiments and Observations on the Colours Used in Painting by the Ancients”. Philosophical Transactions, London. 1 January 1815, No. 105, 97-105. Web archive: 1st Century Colour Palettes.
Dillon, John Talbot. Travels Through Spain. London, 1780. Chapter on: Kermes, Coccus, Grana. Web Archive: 18th Century Colour Palettes.
Dioscorides, Pedanius. De Materia Medica (1st century A.D.). English translation by John Goodyear, London, 1655, modernised by Robert T. Gunther, London, 1933; revised by Tess Anne Osbaldeston, 2008. online at www.cancerlynx.com/dioscorides
Dossie. Robert. The Handmaid to the Arts. London: 1758.
Eraclius, On the Colours and Arts of the Romans, 12th-13th centuries. In “Bolognese Manuscript” of Jehan le Begue in Merrifield, Mary P.. Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Art of Painting. Original Texts with English Translations. London: John Murray, 1849. New York: Dover Publications, 1967.
François, René, alias Etienne Binet. Essay on the Wonders of Nature and the Most Noble Devices. Very Necessary Work for all those who Profess Eloquence, 1621.
Harris, Moses. The Natural System of Colours. London, 1766. Privately Printed in a Limited Edition, Faber Birren, Notes and Commentary. Distributed by the Whitney Library of Design, New York, 1963.
Hidalgo, José Garcia. “Principles for studying the sovereign and most noble Art of Painting” , 1693. “Principios para estudiar el nobilismo y real Arte de la Pintura”. In • Veliz, Zahira, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain. Six Treatises in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. (Reference only)
Hilliard, Nicholas. The Arte of Limning, 1598-1602. R. K. R Thornton & T. G. S. Cain, editors. Northumberland: Carcanet Press, 1992.
Le Blon, Jacques Christophe. Coloritto, or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting / L’Harmonie du coloris dans la peinture. Bilingual edition, London, 1725. Reprint, with Introduction by Faber Birren. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1980.
Le Brun, Pierre, Painter. “Collection of Essays on the Wonders of Painting”, 1635. In Mary P. Merrifield, Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting (London: John Murray, 1849), called the Brussels Manuscript, pp. 770-772, 804-810.
Leonardo de Vinci. Treatise on Painting. Collated by Francesco Melzi, as Libro di pittura, 1540. John Francis Rigaud, translator. London: George Bell & Sons, 1877. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2005. See Leonardo & His Treatise on Painting, University of Virginia, 2012. www.treatiseonpainting.org/cocoon/leonardo/mssFront/all
Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo, A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Englished by Richard Haydocke, London, 1598 or Treatise on the Art of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture /Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura, Milan, 1585.
Mappae Clavicula. A Little Key to the World of Medieval Techniques (6th-9th century). An annotated translation based on a collation of the Sélestat and Phillipps-Corning [Museum of Glass] manuscripts [12th century], with reproductions of the two manuscripts. Cyril Stanley Smith and John G. Hawthorne. The American Philosophical Society, 64 (4), 1974.
Massoul, Constant de. A Treatise on the Art of Painting and the Composition of Colours, Containing Instructions for All the Various Processes of Painting, Together with Observations Upon the Qualities and Ingredients of Colours. London, 1797.
Mayerne, Theodore Turquet de. Pictoria Sculptoria et quae subalternarum artium / Painting, Sculpture and of the Lesser Arts. 1620-1646. Manuscript in Latin, English, French, Italian, and German with contributions by Edward Norgate, Samuel Cooper, Paul van Somers, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, among others. Fol. No. XIX. Sloan 2052, British Museum, London. English translation in Donald Fels, Jr., Lost Secrets of Flemish Painting, Hillsville, Virginia: Alchemist, Inc., 2004.
Merrifield, Mrs. Mary P.. Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Art of Painting. Original Texts with English Translations. London: John Murray, 1849. New York: Dover Publications, 1967.
Mérimée, J.-F.-L. De la peinture à l’huile, Paris, 1830. The Art of Painting in Oil and in Fresco., London, 1839.
Neri, Antonio. L’Arte Vetraria, 1612. Christopher Merret translator, The Art of Glass, London, 1662. Sheffield: Society of Glass Technology, 2006.
Newton, Isaac. Opticks: or, A treatise of the reflexions, refractions, inflexions and colours of light. London, 1704. (Reference only)
Norgate, Edward. Miniatura or the Art of Limning, 1627/8-1648. Manuscript in the British Library. In Jeremy M. Muller & Jim Murrell, Editors, with Introduction and Annotations. New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, Yale University Press, 1997.
Nunes, Felipe. “Arts of poetry, and of painitng and symmetry, with principles of perspective”, 1615. “Arte poetica, e da pintura e symetria, com principios de perspectiva”. In Zahira Veliz, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain. Six Treatises in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Pacheco, Francisco. “The Art of Painting / Arte de la Pintura, 1649. In • Veliz, Zahira, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain. Six Treatises in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Palomino y Velasco, Antonio. “The pictorial museum and optical scale”, 1715-24. “El museo pictórico y la escala óptica”. In Veliz, Zahira, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain. Six Treatises in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Pecham, Henry, Gentleman. The Art of Drawing with the Pen, and Limming in Water Colours, 1606. Facsimile reprint of British Library copy: Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Tertarum, Ltd, and New York: Da Capo Press, 1969.
Petrus de S. Audemar, Of Making Colours, c. 13th century. In “Bolognese Manuscript” of Jehan le Begue in Merrifield, Mary P.. Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Art of Painting. Original Texts with English Translations. London: John Murray, 1849. New York: Dover Publications, 1967.
Piles, Roger de. The First Elements of Practical Painting / Les Premiers Elemens de Peinture Pratique, Paris, 1684.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History (1st century A.D.), H. Rackham, translator. Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press: 1952, 2003.
Pliny the Elder, The Historie of the World, Commonly called The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. London, 1601.
Signac, Paul. “Contribution of the Impressionists”, From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, Paris, 1899; Editions Hermann, 1978. Web archive, Impressionists Palettes of Light.
Strasburg Manuscript, A Medieval Painters’ Handbook, mid- 15th century. V. & R. Borradaile, translators. John Harthan, foreword. London: Alec Tiranti, 1966.
Theophilus. On Divers Arts, 1122. The Foremost Medieval Treatise on Painting, Glassmaking and Metalwork. John G. Hawthorne and Cyril Stanley Smith, translators. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1963. New York: Dover Publications, 1979.
Theophrastus, On Stones (3rd century B.C.). A Modern Edition with Greek Text, Translation, Introduction, and Commentary by E. R. Caley and J. C. Richards. Columbus: Ohio State University, 1956.
Veliz, Zahira, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain. Six Treatises in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Collection of texts, 17th to 18th centuries: Anonymous, Carducho, Hidalgo, Nunes, Pacheco, Palomino.
Vasari, Giorgio, Painter & Architect of Arezzo. Vasari on Technique, Introduction to The Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, prefixed to The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. 1550. Louisa S. Maclehose, translator. London, J. M. Dent & Company, 1907; New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960.
Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture. Morris Hicky Morgan, translator. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914. Reprint New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960.
Volpato, Gian Batista. “The Mode to be Observed in Painting / Modo da Tener nel Dipinger”, in Mrs. Mary P. Merrifield, Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Art of Painting. Original Texts with English Translations. London: John Murray, 1849. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1967, 726-755. Manuscript preserved in the Public Library at Bassano.
Waller, Richard. “Catalogue of Simple and Mixt Colours with a Specimen of Each Colour Prefixt to Its Proper Name. Philosophical Transactions, London, 1 January 1686, 16, 24-32.
Watin, Jean Felix. L’art du peintre, doreur, vernisseur, ouvrage utile aux Artistes et aux Amateurs qui veulent entreprendre de Peindre, Dorer & Verir toutes sortes de sujets en Batiments, Meubles, Bijoux, Equipages, etc. Paris, 1773. / The Art of the Painter, Gilder and Varnisher, A Work Useful to Artists and to Amateurs Who Want to Undertake in Painting, Gilding and Varnishing All Sorts of Subjects for Buildings, Furniture, Jewellery, Carriages, &c..
Treatises