that become trapped and entangled in the web.
After carefully cleaning the webs, they are stretched over a cardboard to form a thin canvas.
Over this canvas a coat of diluted milk is applied to add strength.
The canvas is now ready to paint, but it is still extremely fragile.
Even a gentle poke of a finger can completely destroy a cobweb painting.
Artists used a variety of opaque watercolors to create the paintings.
The very first cobweb paintings were that of saints, and they hung in windows of churches and cloisters.
These cobweb paintings were exported to England, North America and Germany in significant numbers.
The subject of these paintings also became more diverse.
There are possibly no practicing cobweb artist in the world today.
The last skilled cobweb artist based out of Tennessee, in the US, died in 1956.
She began practicing and eventually mastered the secrets of the art.
She also developed her own paint mixtures that would resist sagging, cracking, or tearing the webs.
Even the smallest artwork took thousands of dots and many weeks to complete.
Unfortunately, most of Anne’s fragile paintings have either been lost or destroyed.
Photo credit: Charles Deering Mccormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library
Source:Atlas Obscura/Wikipedia
