Two Practical Applications of Lambert’s Color Pyramid
The Mulhouse-born mathematician and astronomer Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) published, in 1772, a book titled Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauschen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide (Description of a Color Pyramid Painted with Calaus’ Wax). This book includes in its last pages two pyramids, one colored with the above mentioned Calaus’ wax, i.e. water-soluble wax-based paints, and one displaying only numbers. So far, scholars have regarded Lambert’s pyramid as a theoretical color order system. In fact, Lambert devised this colored pyramid and its numerical pendant for rather practical applications such as, for instance, the so-called painting-by-numbers technique and the production of color boxes with prefabricated color cakes.
Since the practical aspects of Lambert’s pyramid have barely received any scholarly attention, this paper aims at presenting them within their historical framework. Hereby, the color cakes and boxes as well as the painting-by-numbers technique are the two cases in point that will be analyzed in the attempt at contextualizing Lambert’s work on colors. Moreover, this paper focuses on the impact of Lambert’s work in disseminating tacit artisanal practices and in the commercialization of new artists’ materials.
Giulia Simonini is a graduate conservator (BA, Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna) and art historian (MA, TU Berlin), and current DFG-funded PhD candidate in History of Science at the TU Berlin with a research project on color charts in 18th century. Since 2017, she is also a freelance paleographer. Previously, she worked at the Chair for History of Eastern European Art (TU Berlin) as assistant to Prof. Dr. Rafał Makała, as a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Lipińska in the pilot project “Loitz Network” and, at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), as a student assistant to Prof. Dr. Sven Dupré in the research group “Art and Knowledge in Pre-Modern Europe”.
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