Resumen de "This they use in Madrid": the ground layer in paintings on canvas in 17th century Madrid
Maite Jover de Celis, María Dolores Gayo García
"El Arte de la Pintura" (1649) by Francisco Pacheco and "El museo pictórico y escala óptica" (1715-1724) by Antonio Palomino contain the most detailed information on practical aspects of painting of all the artistic treatises produced on 17th-century Spanish painting. Both sources provide details on materials and their use, paying particular attention to the methods for preparing canvases for painting. Samples of 17th-century paintings from Madrid often have a thin ground layer applied directly on the canvas which is composed of calcium carbonate for the most part. This paper reviews the various formulas for this layer (called "aparejo") described by Pacheco and Palomino, and for the first time identfies one of them -the ash-based ground layer- is samples of Madrid paintings. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this aspect, a number of wood ash samples were analysed and the ashes "aparejo" was reconstructed according to historical recipes. The analysis of samples from these reconstructions and from Madrid paintings exhibited striking consistencies.
