Concept · The Painter's Colors
Greens
Most old greens were copper: malachite, a ground mineral, and verdigris, made by letting vinegar corrode copper.
Cennini called verdigris and lead white "mortal enemies" and kept them apart. The 1800s added emerald green, bright but full of arsenic, and viridian, a cool chromium green that hardly changes.
- Emerald green also colored wallpapers; by the 1850s doctors were reporting illness in the people who lived with them.
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