I’ve read a number of art books and basically the claim a large part of the reason so many of the “great masters” of painting were crazy is because they used lead based paint. Or mixed other paints with lead. This lead them to go crazy and have symptoms of lead poisoning. For proof of this they say when the artists were in their “crazy” period they were put in assylums or such and they once again became normal once the lead wore out of their systems. Then they returned to painting and the cycle repeated itself.
I thought heavy metals accumulated in the body and never “wore out of the system”. So I don’t believe it. I suspect the truth is that the sort of mentality that leads to artistic genius is just a bit unstable.
I can think of a few painters who went bonky (aside from van Gogh, Hugo van der Goes, perhaps, for example, and Goya got very depressed and there are lots of merely eccentrics but I don’t know about bonky) but I really don’t think this has been claimed by many serious art historians. What books have you read this in?
In the early days (Medieval, Renaissance until I do not know when) much white paint was based on lead, which is why it show up so “well” in x-rays (sorry, I don’t have a citation-- that book’s in storage).
I didn’t follow my site quite far enough into its depths. White was lead based and it seems that lots of white was used. Whether or not that resulted in a lot of lead poisoning is open to question.
Don’t you have to ingest the stuff for it to be harmful? I think the turpentine fumes would get to you a lot quicker than any lead in the paint.
Lead poisoning from paint is generally caused by children chewing on old painted woodwork or by inhaling dust from sanding the stuff. Having lead in a mixture on the end of your paintbrush isn’t going to do a lot of harm.
My husband’s an artist. His favorite white is a lead-based paint and he’s been using it for years. He doesn’t eat it, nor does he inhale it or even get (much) of it on his skin–so no problem.
I’ve read a few books the one I got now is focusing on Francisco Goya. Though it mentions Van Gough. It tells how the old masters would mix paints of lead, cadmium and mercury and absorb them thru touching, breathing and ingesting them via the tips of their tongues.
It shows Goya had 5 years periods where his work suddently went form sweet and sentimental to weird and eerie and often grotesque. Then he’d be put away and gradually get better.
Of course all this is probably speculation in books, that’s why I wanted to know if it was actual or an urban myth.