Canvas

Hemp canvas, which has a yellowish color, was more common in central Russia, since hemp grew better in difficult natural conditions ^[2] . It is usually thicker and coarser than a silver linen canvas, but has higher wear resistance . People wove a canvas of varieties of different quality: for thin ceremonial towels , holiday or work clothes. For many peoples of Russia, it had a width of 36-38 cm, which was determined by the capabilities of manual weaving on home looms.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus noted that "the Thracians (residents of the Eastern Balkans ) even make clothes that are so similar to linen from hemp that a person who is not particularly well versed will not even distinguish whether they are linen or from hemp." Up to the 20th century such canvases were also made in Russia .

In Western Europe, canvas began to be used for painting from the beginning of the 16th century. For the first time, Florentine and Venetian painters began to use canvas in significant quantities, and after them the canvas penetrated the artists of the northern schools - Flemish, Dutch, and German. ^[3] The advantages of canvas over wood were so great that in the 19th century, restorers from European museums began to massively transfer old paintings from a wooden base to a fabric one .

In ancient Russian art there are examples of using the canvas as a basis for small, often bilateral, icons - the so-called "towels". In the XX century, they are commonly called “pills”. The tablet base usually consists of two pieces of canvas glued together. Then the glued canvas was covered on both sides with a thick layer of gesso .

• Canvas // Small Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 4 volumes - St. Petersburg. 1907-1909.