Colored earths are certain minerals or lands that, once agglutinated, are used in painting, as pigments to obtain different colors. Colored earths are a type of natural pigment.
The use of colored earth began in prehistoric painting, had a great impetus in the painting of ancient Egypt and constitutes one of the bases to make colors until the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Other bases are pigments of vegetable or animal origin.
Colored lands are natural lands without manipulations or with minimal manipulations such as drying to remove moisture or crushing to undo the lumps and get a powdery texture. They should not be confused with the colors or pigments in powder called "earth", which are, together with the binders, one of the ingredients of the modern colors to paint. Malachite.
The names of the colors of the range of yellows and ochres such as the natural sienna or the roasted sienna (also known as: natural sienna or toasted sienna) refer to the Tuscan lands in the surroundings of the city of Siena that were used to obtain pigments that according to the content of iron oxides provided one or another color. The Sienese school of painting, during the Trecento spread the use and popularity of these pigments and colors.
The lands of colors more known and used in the History of painting besides the already mentioned syenias are the following:
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