It's all about colour: Rendering reality in Dutch oil painting about 1700

The abstract belongs with a poster presented at the Visual Science of Art Conference (Berlin, 2017). It treats the realism in 17th- and 18th-century still-life paintings: objects like fruits and flowers look as if the beholder can walk around them and easily grab a piece to take a bite. How come a painting can be experienced as such? The answers lie on the crossroads of art history, art technology, visual analysis and visual perception research. This poster presents ongoing research within the project 'Recipes and Realities, An Analysis of Texture Rendering in Still-Life Painting and the Pictorial Procedures of Willem Beurs' (NICAS-funded at Utrecht University, Technical University Delft, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and Mauritshuis The Hague).
On the poster, some aspects of a 17th-century colour formula for painting grapes, as it was given by Willem Beurs in his treatise 'The Big World Painted Small' are demonstrated. Knowing such formulas and the accompanying instructions are crucial for our understanding of the illusionary qualities in Dutch Golden Age Painting. The methods emerged from the urge to render reality as best as possible with materials that were costly and, in some cases, limited available.