Malstick

Jan Vermeer : The Allegory of Painting . The painter uses a painting stick when creating his painting

Georg Friedrich Kersting : Caspar David Friedrich in his studio with a cane

The mahlstick or rest rod is a tool that in classical painting was used by artists, especially in the production of oil paintings. It is a long stick with a wooden shaft and an end wrapped in fabric or leather that can be placed on the edge or frame of a picture. The painter could then rest his brush-guiding hand on the stick when he wanted to paint particularly fine contours and needed a particularly steady hand.

In paintings from the 16th to 19th centuries, the painting stick is very often depicted in portraits of painters, especially in self-portraits , portraits of artist colleagues and in studio scenes . In addition to the palette , the easel and the brush , the painting stick is one of the most important identifying marks for the representation of a painter from this time.

literature

• Malstick . In: Kurt Fassmann (Hrsg.): Subject dictionary of world painting. Volume VI of Kindler's Malereilexikon , Kindler Verlag, Zurich 1964–1971.
• Malstick . In: Harald Olbrich (Ed.): Lexicon of Art. Architecture, fine arts, applied arts, industrial design, art theory. Volume 4 (Kony - Mosa). Revised edition, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-423-05906-0 (digital edition: Directmedia Publishing, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-89853-743-8 ).

Web links

Commons : Malstock  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Malstick . In: The great art lexicon by PW Hartmann