Caput Mortuum is traditionally made from dark violet-brown natural iron oxide pigments from Eastern Europe. The color gets its name due to looking like a bruised corpse, "Caput Mortuum" literally means "Dead Head" in Latin. This color often in modern times gets mistakenly conflated with Mummy Brown- the two colors are worlds apart in terms of pigment source and handling characteristics. You could say that Caput Mortuum is the Earth's natural counterpart to the grisly Mummy Brown. Caput Mortuum is an opaque violet-brown color that works perfectly for shadows and mixing flesh tones.
"All my colors are handmade with only the highest quality pigments and cold-pressed linseed or walnut oil. My professional oil colors are all formulated to be lightfast, non-toxic, durable, and affordable imitations of The World's Rarest Colors. I have studied the colors that I recreate extensively to achieve this goal. Each color looks and behaves similarly to its historical counterpart but without the downfalls of the originals. Made for artists by an artist! "
-Ryan Demaree