Vermillion

Red of Titian, red of blood and throne
mercury sulfide crushed from cinnabar stone
prisoners in Almadén, digging their own grave
so that a Cardinal’s robe on canvas could be saved
toxic dust in lungs, a quarter never returned
beauty for the church, while the miners burned
Rubens mixed it thick, Shinto gates ablaze
Chinese seal paste pressed in ancient days
and now centuries later it darkens toward black
a slow photochemical rot, no turning back

Vermillion red, not just a pigment but the expression of five hundred years of Western painting: mercury sulfide. One of the most toxic minerals known.

Carefully guarded, death sentence, convicts who never return, from the mines in Almadén, cinnabar to the Romans, imagination to Titian and Rubens.

As it darkens, and with the time of centuries, light and chlorine convert the red mercury sulfide into a gray-black crust.

The degradation — the specific pattern of blackening, the way it creeps unevenly across the surface depending on the binder, the varnish, the light exposure — is now one of the ways we authenticate old paintings and objects.

You cannot fake four hundred years of photochemical decay.

The wear patterns on a Napoleon III chair, the patina on a brass fitting, the fading on a rug’s vegetable dyes. Time destroys the beauty and simultaneously makes it real. A pristine antique is a suspicious antique.

We trust the damage because the damage cannot be hurried. Like Prometheus chained to his rock, it is the suffering that proves the thing is genuine, that it has endured something, that it did not simply arrive yesterday wearing a costume.

The most vivid pigment is also the most toxic. Its eventual ruin is what proves it was real. Vermillion does not resolve its contradictions (oh well). It just sits there on the canvas, fractionally less red than it was yesterday, and will be fractionally less red tomorrow, and was once so bright it stopped your breath.