Renaissance Mysteries Volume II. Proportion and Composition

Volume II, the artist as a creative intellectual, links the painter's craft with the creative process and elucidates the degree of compositional planning starting with the painting's rectangular format. The demonstrated evidence for the application of Euclidean geometry is based upon exact measurements of painted surfaces on panels, X-radiographs, and infrared images from paintings. The final chapter concludes with the reasons for the demise of this painting tradition and how industrialization and the standardization of art materials led to a new painting tradition from the nineteenth century.

The natural colors are witnessing a re-birth among a small group of contemporary artists. There is still a lot of confusion surrounding methods of preparation and how to paint with these pigments. This book presents the results of the past thirty years of research and painting on a daily basis with these pigments as well as conclusions from aging tests carried out by museum conservation departments. The book covers the challenges of painting with natural pigments and how this differs from the modern synthetic colors whether in oil or acrylic binding mediums.

British born artist Michael Price works exclusively with natural and mineral pigments which he prepares himself from rocks and crystals. He has exhibited in Germany, France, England, and the U.S. over the past forty years. His two-volume book Renaissance Mysteries was published by Kremer Pigments. He lives and works in Manhattan. Organized by the Department of Mathematics and Science, Pratt Institute.
Reprint of the first edition from 2017.