The colour gold gleams with unparalleled beauty. It appears precious and noble. Golden objects are representative of richness, power and high standing. No wonder that its shimmer evokes desire. Whether jewellery, artwork or treasures – with gold, these become something very special. The precious metal was seen as divine and used richly for ornament in churches and temples. So it’s clear why the Sun King Louis XIV felt particularly drawn to gold and used a profusion of gold to deck out his palace. 
 

The colour gold appeared already in the early Byzantine era. In around 547 AD, Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora had religious sites adorned with golden mosaics. In late-Byzantine icon painting, pictures were gilded with wafer-thin gold leaf – typically for the background or halos. 

Painters like Rembrandt visually created the impression of gold by skilfully placing different pigments next to each other. In the painting "The Night Watch" (1642), one figure really stands out. While Rembrandt used predominantly dark shades for his painting, the figure of the lieutenant wears light-coloured robes with gold thread. Experts from the University of Amsterdam recently discovered that Rembrandt resorted to a combination of arsenic and sulphur. For the golden embroidery in the clothing, he used two variations of the mineral pararealgar.  One in a yellowish tone, with reddish orange next to it. 
 

The old masters relied on certain toxic pigments to evoke the look of gold in art. Good that these times are long gone and artists can now use synthetic pigments. Chemically prepared metallic pigments make the golden colours at KREUL into safe acrylic paints. In the KREUL assortment, gleaming gold and metallic colours are included in the product lines SOLO GOYA Acrylic, SOLO GOYA Triton Acrylic, KREUL el Greco Acrylic and KREUL Acrylic Metallic Paints. 

Many artists use real leaf gold as a sophisticated highlight. One alternative is offered by KREUL leaf metal in the colour gold. This is a beaten metal, to be more exact it is copper with a special alloy that closely imitates real gold.