@hollyr.eth

Framedl 2026-09-19 1/6* Philippe de Champaigne's Vanitas Caput mortuum or 'dead head' was the alchemists' name for what stayed at the bottom of the vessel after distillation. Ruin and decay, marked with a skull. But it was a stage in the work, not a failure: the spent matter you had to pass through. Painters took the name for a dark purple-brown iron oxide, used for the robes of saints and kings. It came off the sulfuric acid trade as a byproduct. Residue named for residue. Confusingly, the same name sometimes got attached to Egyptian brown, the pigment ground from actual mummies, which Delacroix used until the supply and the stomach for it ran out. Broach the vessel and what's left at the bottom turns out to be the color. Residues: @sub @hyp

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