Guides: Studio Arts: Materials & Process Research @ Pitt: Historically Used Materials

Medieval & Renaissance Europe

Helpful Keyword Searches:

Medieval AND art materials
Middle Ages AND art materials
Middle Ages AND paint techniques
Medieval AND art guilds
Medieval AND decorative arts

Search Tips

Search for specific materials, like bronze, glass, or lapis lazuli
Search for specific guilds or works of art
Search for specific artists who used a material that you're interested in

Finding Articles

Through our library system, students and faculty have access to many Art and Architecture Databases. The following databases would be the most helpful when doing research on historical materials and processes.

Art Full Text This link opens in a new window
Art Full Text is a bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts articles from periodicals published throughout the world. In addition to articles, Art Full Text indexes reproductions of works of art that appear in indexed periodicals.
Bibliography of the History of Art Repertoire de la litterature de l'art This link opens in a new window
The Bibliography of the History of Art is the most comprehensive art bibliography available worldwide, covering European and American visual arts from late antiquity to the present. This database indexes and abstracts art-related books, conference proceedings and dissertations, exhibition and dealers' catalogs, and articles from over 4,300 periodicals.

The Ancient World

Beyond Iconography: Materials, Methods, and Meaning in Ancient Surface Decoration by Sarah Lepinski; Susanna McFadden; Archaeological Institute of America Staff
This volume presents a spectrum of current research on ancient surface decoration (painting mosaic, and stuccowork/plasterwork) that offers new avenues of exploration and directions of inquiry. The collected essays draw from a wide range of disciplinary frameworks and integrate material analysis, the study of technical characteristics, the investigation of literary and archaeological evidence, and the interpretation and reconstruction of iconographic programs. Geographically, the papers focus on paintings from the Mediterranean world, including examples from the Bronze Age Aegean, the Hellenistic Levant, and Roman Campania and Greece. Exciting work on Classical Maya paintings in Guatemala augment the case studies from the Mediterranean region and provide an important opportunity for cross-cultural comparisons of ancient artistic and cultural practices as well as modern analytical approaches.

Printmaking

Engraving and Etching 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes by Ad Stijnman
This book covers the history of the material-technical aspects of engraving, etching and intaglio plate printing through history.
The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe by Peter Parshall
More than a generation before the invention of Gutenberg’s celebrated press, the new technology of image printing emerged. In this book, a distinguished group of scholars treats the earliest manifestations of printing in all aspects: technical experimentation, the complex relation of printed books to printed images, individual and institutional patronage, new iconographies, religious propaganda, and the wide variety of private and public ways in which printed images were first employed.

Searching WorldCat

WorldCat This link opens in a new window
The WorldCat database is the OCLC Online Union Catalog. It contains more than 450 million records in 484 languages describing items owned by our libraries or 10,000 other libraries around the world.

If there is a book or other resource that our library system does not own, and if that book is unavailable through EZBorrow, WorldCat is a great option for searching libraries worldwide, who you can request the book from, have it sent to Pitt, and borrow it for a short amount of time.

One great way to search WorldCat for resources would be to compare subject headings by searching the same subject headings contained within our catalog that you used previously to search for materials in our library.

Visual Research with Artstor

One technique for historical materials research is to expose yourself to the way materials were used by artists and artisans in the past. A great place to start is the Artstor database.

Example:

I'm just starting my research and want to see how lace was used in different ways throughout the Early Modern period before deciding on my research question.

Navigate to Artstor by going to library.pitt.edu and searching for "Artstor" under the "Databases" tab, or click the link on the bottom of this section
If you do not already have an account, getting one is fast and free with your Pitt email address. Simply click the Artstor Digital Library link and register in the upper right hand corner
One the left of the Artstor homepage you will see and click the Advanced Search link
In one of the keyword search boxes, type in the keyword "lace"
In the date range boxes, put 1400 in the first box, and 1700 in the second box.
Carry out your search.

Each image will have extra information regarding the object when you double click an image and click the small "i" button.

Artstor This link opens in a new window

University of Pittsburgh Library System

Course & Subject Guides

Studio Arts: Materials & Process Research @ Pitt: Historically Used Materials