Renaissance Painting Techniques
About
Artist and RISD professor Bill Drew will share an overview of Renaissance painting with examples of materials and techniques. Drew will explain and demonstrate each step of the following painting techniques: pure egg yolk tempera; egg-oil emulsion; and the Venetian method of oil painting. These technical demonstrations will illustrate the complexity and challenge of restoring paintings.
Prior to this demonstration, painting conservator Elizabeth Wicks will discuss her restoration process of Artemisia Gentileschi’s ceiling painting Allegory of Inclination, created in 1616. Learn more here.
Free. Registration for this in-person program is requested. An outline of Drew's session will be included in the registration confirmation email.
Bill Drew (RISD BFA 1969 + MFA 1972 Painting) first became interested in Renaissance painting as a student in RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome, Italy in 1969. As an abstract painter, this art continued to inform his paintings, and in 1980 he was awarded a Fulbright-Hays grant to Italy for painting and conduct independent research on Renaissance painting techniques.
Drew is a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and for twenty-five years he conducted a “Techniques of Renaissance Painting” travel class for RISD students where they viewed first-hand great examples of Renaissance painting in Venice, Florence and Rome after having had first-hand experience in the methods and techniques of Renaissance painting.
He has lectured in numerous colleges and museums, and in 1994 was awarded a special residency by the government of Pakistan to deliver a series of lectures regarding the similarities between the painting techniques of late-medieval and early Renaissance paintings and traditional Mughal paintings of the 15th and 16th Centuries.
This demonstration, part of Sott' Acqua: A Tale of Two Cities Under Water, is presented by Splendor of Florence, the City of Providence, RISD, RISD’s Center for Community Partnership, and RISD Museum, Brown University, and many others.