Pre-primer

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A pre-primed canvas must be "folded in" at the corners in order to stretch it onto the stretcher frame. This area is then particularly protected from environmental influences, so that the original white color of the primer has been retained here.
The canvas was stretched onto a large frame with a continuous thread and then primed. After the primer had dried, the canvas was cut into the pieces required for the canvas paintings and these were nailed onto a stretcher frame.

The pre-priming is a process for the efficient production of textile primed image carrier ( canvases ). The canvas for a painting was no longer individually primed, but has been cut to the desired size from a fabric stretched and primed on an oversized frame since the middle of the 17th century. For painting, the pre-primed piece of canvas was nailed to a stenter frame or stretcher , in our time "stapled". In the 17th and 18th centuries, this was mainly done by assistants in the workshop of the respective artist, while since the 19th century, pre-primed canvases were mainly produced industrially in strips and offered for sale.

In the 19th century, the primers as a filler and colorants in addition contained chalk , kaolin and white lead and zinc white and baryte . Glutine glue was used as a binding agent, to which a high proportion of a drying oil was always added in order to keep the primer elastic as long as possible for sale and to be able to store it rolled up. In order to accelerate the “drying process” of the oil, siccatives were added, with the result that the primer not only darkened over time, but also became brittle and brittle. In summary, these pre-primed canvases were not without problems for the painting on them.

development

The fact that image carriers were not only primed by the artists in their own workshop, but also given to “preparers”, specialists with their own workshop, and thus virtually primed, is evident from a letter from Albrecht Dürer (1507) to Jakob Heller , who commissioned the so-called Heller -Altars , known.

In 1620 , Théodore de Mayerene mentions an “imprimeur” in London in the source writings . In 1654 the “canvas primer” Peeter van Nesten testified that he had primed canvases for the painter Thomas Bosschaert (1614–1654) for 20 years. Pre-primed canvases have been mentioned in England since 1668.

Colored primers are often found in paintings that were created in the 18th century.

Colored primers, usually red or red-brown ( bolus primer ), are often found in paintings that were created in the 18th century. White primers have only existed since the 19th century. In this way, pre-primed canvases can, to a certain extent, help narrow down the age of a painting ( terminus post quem ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Knut Nicolaus: DuMont's handbook of painting . DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-7288-2 .
  2. ↑ Ernst Berger: Sources for painting technique during the Renaissance and its subsequent period (XVI.-XVIII centuries) in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, France and England together with the De Mayerne manuscript . Munich 1901.