Today, when you stand before the pigment wall, you’re facing the same raw colours that have travelled from Renaissance ceilings to modern studios. At eye level are rows of dense earth colours – raw and burnt umbers, siennas, ochres; so-called workhorse pigments favoured by Old Masters and Aboriginal communities. On the shelves below sits a jar of whiting: finely ground calcium carbonate, chalk in its most useful form. A few jars along, the pearly granules of rabbit‑skin glue which, when melted and mixed with whiting, forms gesso, the smooth, absorbent ground on which oil gilding and painting depend.
