Alphabe Thursday is for Zangar (verdigris) or green!

Z is for Zangar Urdu for verdigris as described by Cennino as ‘lovely to the eye but doesn’t last’.  Leonardo  da Vinci a century later was worried that  ‘it vanishes into thin air if not varnished quickly’.  There also was another problem with the paint, like white lead, verdigris was a mortal enemy.  It was made rather like white lead but the metal suspended over the vinegar was copper after a while the combination would produce a poisonous green deposit.  It was a often called Van Eyck green because the Flemish master used it often and successfully. Unlike the Italians, namely Leonardo whose verdigris blackened as Cennini warned.

The Flemish artists used a varnish on the paint to preserve it and it has indeed lasted centuries. As seen in in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage