Gold Leaf, Valuable Material For Valuable Subjects

Since Ancient Egyptians we have been painting on gold leaf, the bright, inert element, eternally reflecting, never rusting.  If you want to insure perceived value in your subject simply clothe them, surround them or  present them in gold.  From India to Egypt, From China to Europe,  for  thousands of years we have used gold to amplify the vitality of  our depictions.  When walking past a reflectant surface we feel its light following our gaze, subtly illuminating our space and insisting on our reverence for its precious aura.  We look out on a three dimensional world.  And, since Mediterranean antiquity we aimed to evoke that three dimensional world on a flat surface with paint.  Gold has more reflectance than a fresco or canvas we experience a sense of lively light coming from the painting which employs gold.   Early users of the gold leaf relied on its intrinsic value to underscore the value of their subjects, gods, virgins, saints or royals. They did not fully exploit its potential to support  mimesis,  the imitation of the visible world.   In the first example you see a 6th century AD Byzantine  use of gold to flagrantly elevate is subjects.  In my second example from the 14th century , Italian artists generously  applied gold leaf to their paintings.  Backgrounds, Halos, crowns are all leafed with gold. You can read the relative value of the painting’s subjects by the size of their golden halo or, their crowns or, the extent of gold in their garments. The scene itself is elevated by its backdrop of gold. The  14th and 15th century Renaissance studio included gold leafing as a standard skill to be learned by each apprentice.  Cennino Cennini’s  widely circulated studio handbook  of 1396,”The Book Of Art” explains the process of leafing among its many instructions.  Fra Angelico, working from a monastery in Fiesole near Florence not only delicately used the gold leaf for halos, angel wings, and background but also, reinforced the value of the angel’s words announcing Mary’s divine pregnancy by serving them up in gold leaf (example 3).

example 1.   

example 2.

example 3.

Today artists use both gold leaf and other metals to animate the reflective surface of their artworks. El Anatsui’s (Ghana) curtain of  woven bits of  commercial  metal detritus reflects its colors and bright surface  a manner  suggesting  Byzantine mosaics, with each tile tilted to reflect the light at variable angles. The buckling folds in the metal quilt create shade patterns where we see the colors vary from those capturing direct light.  See example 4.

What follows is a step-by-step application of oil color to a surface of 23 karat gold leaf. The gold has been leafed onto  a sheet of aluminum.  I buy 23karat versus 18 or lesser karat because, an attraction of gold is its intrinsic sense of value and therefore,  the higher the karat the greater the  cultural associative value.  I prepare the aluminum with an easy to use water-based sizing known as  ” Wunda Size”.  Apart from its ridiculous name, this sizing is easy to apply. Simply pour a small pool  of the sizing in the middle of your surface and spread it evenly.  I use a soft rag or paper toweling.  The advantage to this size is that it will stay “open” or tacky for an extremely long period.  Next, I apply  patent gold leaf.  With patent gold leaf you do not need to worry about moving  the air-light leaves about.  Simply, press the paper sheet holding the leaf onto the pre-sized(glue) surface.  After leafing the surface I gently dust the gold with a super soft cosmetic brush which insures uniform adhesion and removes excess material.  Then, I pour a small puddle of polymer gloss varnish ( I use Golden brand) into the  center of the gold leafed area and gently smooth the varnish  over the surface.  This varnishing barely diminishes the gold’s reflectance and creates a more durable surface on which to paint. Beware;  gold leaf is exceptionally fragile. The following examples illustrate the step-by-step progression of the painting on gold leaf.

example 5.   I leafed the entire surface. Much of the gold is still directly visible here as I begin to apply translucent layers of  oil paint.

example 6.  The blue of the stream bed acts as a color complement to the yellows and oranges.

example 7. a detail of the lower left corner in example 6.

example 8. a detail  of the same corner as I proceed with the painting.

example 9.  The status of the painting at present. Notice that in the sky you can detect areas of the gold as  yellowish  hues under the paint. The translucence of  the paint has let the gold show its effect across the entire picture plane.

example 10.  Here is another example of an oil on 23karat gold leaf  on aluminum.