Lead White

For several centuries the white that painters bought for their canvases was the same lead compound that fashionable women applied to their faces.^{1, 2, 3}

Lead white, basic lead carbonate, was one of the first pigments made by people, and as a cosmetic it was known as ceruse.^{1, 2}

The pigment was made by corroding metallic lead with vinegar fumes, oxygen and carbon dioxide over fermenting organic matter, a method known as the stack process.¹ Venice was a major producer in the Middle Ages.¹ By the end of the eighteenth century the Netherlands had more than 35 lead white factories exporting across Europe, and painters favoured their product for its quality.¹

Venetian ceruse was the cosmetic form, and Elizabeth I used it to achieve her famously pale complexion.² White lead is toxic if eaten or inhaled.³ It is not easily absorbed through intact skin, so how much harm the cosmetic did has been an open question.³

One case associated with ceruse is that of Maria Gunning.⁴ She arrived in London in 1751, aged about seventeen, and became Countess of Coventry.^{3, 4} She died on 30 September 1760.⁴ Her death has been attributed to white lead cosmetics, but the attribution is an allegation rather than an established cause.⁴ She is reported to have continued wearing lead foundation while she was dying.³

The physicist Fiona McNeill of McMaster University, who studies lead poisoning, set out to test the question directly.³ Her laboratory recreated historical recipes, applied them to pigskin, and measured how much lead passed through into a solution that mimicked body fluid.³ A recipe attributed to Elizabeth I, white lead mixed with vinegar, let through more lead than the other mixtures her team had tested.³

Ceruse fell out of fashion in the Victorian period, and by the early 1900s pearl white and talc had largely replaced it.² As a pigment, lead white remained in use until the middle of the twentieth century, when its toxicity led to restrictions and titanium and zinc whites took its place.¹

One material served for two kinds of portrait, and only the one on the canvas was expected to last.