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Other documents randomly have
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 155. For Vasari, a practical artist, to commit himself to the statement that
figures are made nine heads high, is somewhat extraordinary, for eight heads, the
proportion given by Vitruvius (III, 1) is the extreme limit for a normal adult, and
very few Greek statues, let alone living persons, have heads so small. The recently
discovered ‘Agias’ by Lysippus, at Delphi, is very nearly eight heads high. The
‘Doryphorus’ at Naples not much more than seven. The ‘Choisseul Gouffier Apollo’
about seven and a half, etc. Vasari seems to have derived his curious mode of
reckoning from Filarete, who in Book 1 of his Treatise on Architecture measures a
man as follows: Head = 1 head, neck = ½, breast = 1, body = 2, thighs = 2, legs = 2,
foot = ½, total nine heads. Alberti, Leonardo, Albrecht Dürer, and indeed almost
all the older writers on art, discourse on the proportions of the human figure.

156. See Note on ‘Waxen Effigies and Medallions,’ at the close of the
‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 188.

157. One objection to an armature of wood is that the material may swell with
the damp of the clay and cause fissures. Iron is objectionable because the rust
discolours the clay. Modern sculptors often use gas-piping in the skeletons of their
models, as this is flexible and will neither rust nor swell.

158. Baked flour used to be employed by plasterers to keep the plaster they
were modelling from setting too rapidly. See the Introduction by G. F. Robinson to
Millar’s Plastering Plain and Decorative, London, 1897. The former used rye
dough with good effect for the above purpose.

159. The tow or hay tied round the wood affords a good hold for the clay,
which is apt to slip on anything smooth.

160. This method of producing drapery is not very artistic.

161. See Note on ‘Proportionate Enlargement’ at close of the ‘Introduction’ to

Sculpture, postea, p. 190.

162. See Note on ‘The Use of Full-sized Models’ at the close of the
‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 192.

163. The carvers’ tools described by Vasari are the same that appear to have
been in use in ancient Greece (see the article by Professor E. Gardner already
referred to), that are figured in the Encyclopédie of the eighteenth century, and are
now in use. Fig. 2, E to J, ante, p. 48, shows a set of them actually employed in a
stone carver’s workshop at Settignano near Florence.

164. Actual polish of the surface of a marble figure is to be avoided, as the

reflections from it where it catches the light destroy the delicacy of the effect of
light and shade. Greek marbles were not polished, save in some cases where the
aim seems to have been to imitate the appearance of shining bronze, but the
Greeks finished their marbles more smoothly than the sculptors of to-day, most of
whom prefer a ‘sensitive’ surface on which the marks of the last delicate chiselling
can be discerned. Michelangelo’s Dead Christ in the ‘Pietà’ of St. Peter’s, his most
finished piece of marble work, may almost be said to show polish, and Renaissance
marbles generally are quite as smoothly finished as antiques. In the case of
coloured marbles, used for surface decoration in plain panels, polish is of course
necessary in order that the colour and veining may appear, but it does not follow
from this that a self-coloured marble, carved into the similitude of a face or figure,
should be polished.

165. English terminology for the different kinds of reliefs, and for sculpture
generally, is very deficient, and many Italian terms are employed. It may be noted
that Vasari’s ‘half relief’ (mezzo rilievo) is the highest kind he mentions, and would
correspond to what is called in English ‘high relief.’

166. See Note on ‘Italian and Greek Reliefs,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’
to Sculpture, postea, p. 196.

167. Donatello’s flat, or ‘stiacciati’ reliefs are deservedly famous. The difficulty
here is to convey the impression of solid form of three dimensions with the
slightest possible actual salience. The treatment of the torso of the Christ in the
marble ‘Pietà’ of the Victoria and Albert Museum is a good example.

168. The antique vessels of so-called ‘Arezzo’ ware are called Aretine vases.
Messer Giorgio was in duty bound to take some note of the ancient pottery of his
native city for it was from this that the Vasari derived their family name. According
to the family tree given in a note to the Life of an ancestor of the historian (Opere,
ed. Milanesi, II, 561), the family came from Cortona, and the first who settled in
Arezzo was the historian’s great-grandfather, one Lazzaro, an artist in ornamental
saddlery. He had a son, Giorgio, who practised the craft of the potter, and was
especially concerned with the old Roman Aretine vases the technique of which he
tried to reproduce. Hence he was called ‘Vasajo,’ ‘the vase maker,’ from which
came the family appellation Vasari.
This ancient Aretine ware ‘must be regarded as the Roman pottery par
excellence’ (Waters, History of Ancient Pottery, Lond., 1905, II, 480). It is
practically the same ware that is known by the popular but unscientific term
‘Samian,’ and consists in cups and bowls and dishes usually of a small size of a fine
red clay, ornamented with designs in low relief, produced by the aid of stamps or
moulds. It is these relief ornaments that Vasari had in his mind when he wrote the
words in the text. Arezzo is noticed by Pliny and other ancient writers as a great
centre for the fabrication of this sort of ware, and Vasari tells us how his
grandfather, Giorgio the ‘vasajo,’ discovered near the city some kilns of the ancient
potters and specimens of their work. Very good specimens of Aretine ware are to
be seen in the Museum at Arezzo, and the fabrique is represented in all important
collections of ancient pottery.
 169. See Note on ‘The Processes of the Bronze Founder’ at the close of the
‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 199, which the reader who is unacquainted
with the subject, will find it useful to read forthwith. The best commentary on
Vasari’s and Cellini’s account of bronze casting is to be found in the French
Encyclopédie, where there is a description, with numerous illustrations, of the
casting in 1699 of Girardon’s great equestrian statue of Louis XIV, destined for the
Place Vendôme. It was claimed at the time to be the largest known single casting in
the world, and represents in their utmost elaboration the various processes
described by Vasari. Some of the illustrations are here reproduced, and will help to
render clearer the descriptions in the text.

170. Plate VII shows a section or two of a piece-mould round a portion of a

figure. It will be noticed that the pieces are so planned that they will all come away
easily from the model and not be held by any undercut projections. The small
pieces are then all enclosed in an outer shell divided into two halves, and called in
French ‘chape’ answering to the ‘cappa’ of Vasari’s text. Plate VIII, A, shows the
model of the Louis XIV statue as piece-moulded.

171. In the case of a heavy casting such an armature is necessary, and must be
carefully constructed to give support at all points. The armature within the core of
the horse of Louis XIV is shown in Plate VIII, D.

172. Vasari here describes a method of constructing the indispensable shell of

wax which is to be replaced by the bronze. The hollow piece-mould is lined section
by section with wax and a core is then formed to fill the rest of the interior and
touch the inner surface of the wax at every point. The plaster mould is then
removed and the wax linings of each of its sections are applied, each in its proper
place, to the core, and fixed thereon by skewers. There is then a complete figure in
wax, but, as this is made up of very many pieces, it has to be gone over carefully to
smooth over the joins and secure unity of surface. Cellini’s plan seems a better one.
He lines his hollow mould with a sort of paste or dough, and then fills up with the
core. The dough is then removed and wax is poured in in its place, thus forming a
continuous skin and securing a more perfect unity in the waxen shell.

173. On Plate VIII at B we see the core covered with the skin of wax and
carefully gone over and finished in every part. The system of pipes with which it is
covered are the ‘vents’ that Vasari notices in § 62, and also the channels through
which the melted wax is to escape and the molten bronze to enter, as noticed in §§
63, 64.

174. Vasari actually says that it must be put ‘al fuoco’ ‘to the fire,’ but it is clear
that he does not mean that heat is at once to be applied to it. If this were done the
wax would all be melted off the core too soon, before it was covered by the outer
skin. It is only when the wax has been securely enclosed between the core and the
outer skin that heat is needed to melt it away and leave its place free for the molten
metal.
 175. Plate VIII, C, shows this outer armature, with the ends of the transverse
rods holding core and envelope together.

176. ‘Give passage to the metal.’ Their essential purpose is to allow for the
escape of air which would be dangerous if driven by the metal into a confined
space.

177. It should be understood that, in the process Vasari has in mind, the
melted metal is introduced at the bottom of the mould so as to rise in it and expel
before it the air. It is not poured in at the top. Hence the metal enters at the same
orifice at which the wax flows out.

178. Plate VIII, D, gives a section through the model in the casting-pit, when
all is ready for the actual operation of introducing the molten metal. The wax has
all been run out, and the outline of the figure and of the horse is marked by a
double line with a narrow space between. It is this space that will be filled by the
bronze which will be introduced through numerous channels so that it may be
distributed rapidly and evenly over the whole surface it is to cover. When in the pit
the mould is packed all round with broken bricks or similar material, so that ‘the
bronze may not strain it,’ nor cause it to shift.

179. The wax has already been carefully weighed, and in order to estimate how
much bronze will be required for the cast a rough calculation is made based on the
amount of wax.

180. The subject of the composition of bronze and of other alloys of copper is a
complicated one, for the mixtures specified or established by analysis are very
varied. Normally speaking, bronze is a mixture of copper with about ten per cent.
of tin, brass of copper with twenty to forty per cent. of zinc. Vasari’s proportions
for bells and for cannon are pretty much what are given now. In the Manuel de
Fondeur (Manuels Roret) Paris, 1879, II, p. 94, eight to fifteen per cent. of tin are
prescribed for cannon, fifteen to thirty per cent. for bell metal, the greater
percentage of tin with the copper resulting in a less tough but harder and so
sharper sounding metal. It will be noted however that for statuary metal Vasari
specifies a mixture not of copper and tin but of copper and brass, that is, copper
and zinc. Brass is composed of, say, twenty-five per cent. of zinc and seventy-five
per cent. of copper, so that a mixture of two thirds, or sixty-six per cent., of copper
with one third, or thirty-three per cent., of brass would work out to about ten parts
of zinc to ninety of copper, and this agrees with classical proportions. The Greeks
used tin for their bronzes, but various mysterious ingredients were supposed to be
mingled in to produce special alloys. The Romans used zinc, or rather zinciferous
ores such as calamine, with or in place of tin, and this is the tradition that Vasari
follows.
A recent analysis of the composition of the bronze doors at Hildesheim, dating
from 1015 A.D., gives about seventy-six parts copper, ten lead, eight tin, four zinc;
and of the ‘Bernward’ pillar ascribed to about the same date, seventy copper,
twenty-three tin, and five lead. These differences may surprise us, but metal
casting in those days was a matter of rule of thumb, and we may recall Cellini’s
account of his cramming all his household vessels of pewter into the melting pot to
make the metal flow for casting his ‘Perseus.’

181. Vasari’s account of the making of dies for medals and of the process of
striking these is clear, and agrees with the more elaborate directions contained in
the seventh and following chapters of Cellini’s Trattato dell’ Oreficeria. Cellini
however, unlike Vasari, was a practical medallist, and he goes more into detail. The
process employed was not the direct cutting of the matrices or dies with chisels,
nor, as gems are engraved, by the use of the wheel and emery (or diamond)
powder, but the stamping into them of the design required by main force, by
means of specially shaped hard steel punches on which different parts of the
design had been worked in relief. The steel of the matrix or die had of course to be
previously softened in the fire, or these punches would have made no impression
on it. When finished it was again hardened by tempering. It may be noticed that
the dies from which Greek coins were struck were to all appearance engraved as
gems were engraved by the direct use of cutting tools or tools that, like the wheel,
wore away the material with the aid of sand or emery.
The two matrices, or dies, for the obverse and reverse of the medal, being now
prepared, the medal is not immediately struck. In the case of the Greek coin a
bean-shaped piece, or a disk, of plain metal, usually of silver, called a ‘blank’ or
‘flan,’ was placed between the two dies and pressed into their hollows by a blow or
blows of the hammer, so that all that was engraved on them in intaglio came out on
the silver in relief. Vasari’s process is more elaborate. A sort of trial medal is first
struck from the matrices in a soft material such as lead or wax, and this trial medal
is reproduced by the ordinary process of casting in the gold or silver or bronze
which is to be the material of the final medal. This cast medal has of course the
general form required, but it is not sharp nor has it a fine surface. It is therefore
placed between the matrices and forcibly compressed so as to acquire all the finish
of detail and texture desired.

182. Plaster, or stucco, is sometimes regarded as an inferior material only to

be used when nothing better can be obtained. It should not however be judged
from the achievements of the domestic plasterer of to-day, who has to trust
sometimes to the wall-paper to keep his stuff from crumbling away. Plaster as used
by the ancients, and through a good part of the mediaeval and Renaissance periods
up to the eighteenth century, is a fine material, susceptible of very varied and
effective artistic treatment. It was made by the Greeks of so exquisite a quality that
it was equivalent to an artificial marble. It could be polished, so Vitruvius tells us,
till it would reflect the beholder’s face as in a mirror, and he describes how the
Roman connoisseurs of his time would actually cut out plain panels of Greek
stucco from old walls and frame them into the plaster work of their own rooms,
just as if they were slabs of precious marble. (De Architectura, VII, iii, 10.) Vitruvius
prescribes no fewer than six successive coats of plaster for a wall, each laid on
before the last is dry, the last coat being of white lime and finely powdered marble.
By the Villa Farnesina at Rome some Roman, or more probably Greek, plaster
decoration was discovered a few years ago that surpassed any work of the kind
elsewhere known. We find there the moulded or stamped ornament Vasari
describes, as well as figure compositions modelled by hand, while the plain
surfaces are in themselves a delight to the artistic eye.
Among the best and best known stucco work, in figures and ornaments, of the
later Italian Renaissance, may be ranked that at Fontainebleau by Primaticcio and
other artists from the peninsula who were invited thither by François I, for the
decoration of the ‘Galerie François I’ and the ‘Escalier du Roi.’

183. The composition of these two mucilages is given by Theophilus, in the

Schedula, Book one, chapter 17, and also by Cennini, Trattato, chapters 110–112.
Soft cheese from cows’ milk must, according to the earlier recipe, be shredded
finely into hot water and braised in a mortar to a paste. It must then be immersed
in cold water till it hardens, and then rubbed till it is quite smooth on a board and
afterwards mixed with quick lime to the consistency of a stiff paste. Panels
cemented with this, says Theophilus, will be held so fast when they are dry that
neither moisture nor heat will bring them apart. Vasari does not seem to have such
faith in the mucilage, and prefers that made from boiling down shreds of
parchment and other skins. The twelfth century writer knows how to make this
also. See chapter eighteen of the first Book of the Schedula.

184. Every museum contains examples of these delicate German carvings in

hard materials.

185. In a Note to the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, ante, p. 128 f., an account

was given of some sculptures in travertine on the façade of the church of S. Luigi
dei Francesi at Rome by a ‘Maestro Gian’ who has been conjecturally identified as a
certain Jean Chavier or Chavenier of Rouen who worked at Rome in the first
quarter of the sixteenth century. Vasari in this place introduces an artist of the
name of ‘Maestro Janni francese,’ and the question at once arises whether he is the
same person as the ‘Maestro Gian’ of Rome.
The statue here described is to be seen in the church of the Annunziata at
Florence, but not where Vasari saw it. It has been placed for about the last half
century in the spacious round choir, where it occupies a niche in the wall of the
second chapel to the left as one faces the high altar. It has been painted white in
the hope that it may be mistaken for marble, and this characteristic performance
dates from about 1857. Certain fissures observable show however that it is of wood,
and one of the Frati remembers it when it was as Vasari saw it ‘nello stesso colore
del legname.’ The work is shown on Plate IX. We have been unable to discover
anything certain about the artist. The figure, which is in excellent preservation,
speaks for itself. The Saint has a tight fitting cap over his head and curling hair and
beard. His eyes are almost closed as he looks down with a somewhat affected air at
his wounded leg to which the finger of his right hand is pointing. The other hand
holds a staff, round which the drapery curls and over the top of which it is caught.
This drapery bears out Vasari’s description of it as ‘traforato’ ‘cut into.’ It is floridly
treated with the sharp angles common in the carving of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries in Germany, Flanders, and parts of France. M. Marcel Reymond, who has
kindly given his opinion on the photographs submitted to him, has written about it
as follows: ‘Le St. Roch, par la surcharge de vêtements, l’excès de reliefs, l’agitation
des draperies, se rattache à l’art français tel qu’il s’était constitué au xivme siècle, et
tel qu’il s’était continué jusqu’au xvime siècle, notamment dans le Bourgogne et la
Champagne.’ He does not consider the two ‘Maîtres Jean’ the same person. ‘Ce
sont sans doute deux artistes du xvime siècle, l’un travaillant la pierre, le travertin,
l’autre travaillant le bois. C’est leur aptitude à travailler ces deux matières, que les
artistes italiens travaillaient moins bien que les français qui a retenu l’attention de
Vasari sur eux et qui leur a fait attribuer une place si importante dans les préfaces
de Vasari.’ Our study of the originals at Rome and Florence has led us to the same
opinion. The S. Rocco is Gothic in feeling, the ‘Salamander’ and other pieces at
Rome are Renaissance. The Roman ‘Maestro Gian’ may be credited with an Italian
style, but Vasari does not show much critical acumen when he sees ‘la maniera
italiana’ in the S. Rocco of the Florentine Janni.

186. The first two sections, §§ 74, 75, of this chapter were added by Vasari in
the second edition. They contain his contribution to the philosophy of the graphic
art. It will be noted that his word ‘Disegno’ corresponds alike to our more general
word ‘design’ and the more special term ‘drawing.’

187. This remark of Vasari is significant of the change in architectural practice

between the mediaeval and modern epochs. That the architect is a man that sits at
home and makes drawings, while practical craftsmen carry them out, is to us a
familiar idea, but the notion would greatly have astonished the builders of the
French Gothic cathedrals or the Florentines of the fourteenth century. In
mediaeval practice the architect was the master of the work, carrying the scheme of
the whole in his head, but busy all the time with the actual materials and tools, and
directing progress rather from the scaffolding than from the drawing office. On the
tombstone of the French architect of the thirteenth century, Hughes Libergier, at
Reims, he is shown with the mason’s square, rule, and compasses about him; while
in the relief that illustrates ‘Building’ on Giotto’s Campanile at Florence we see the
master mason directing the operations of the journeymen from a position on the
structure itself. In the present day there is a strong feeling in the profession that
this separation of architect and craftsman, which dates from the later Renaissance,
is a bad thing for art, and that the designer should be in more intimate touch with
the materials and processes of building.

188. It is characteristically Florentine to regard painting as essentially the

filling up of outlines, and to colour in staccato fashion with an assorted set of tints
arranged in gradation. To the eye of the born painter outlines do not exist and
nature is seen in tone and colour, while colours are like the tones of a violin infinite
in gradation, not distinct like the notes of a piano. With the exception of the
Venetians and some other North Italians such as Correggio and Lotto, the Italians
generally painted by filling outlines with local tints graded as light, middle, and
dark, and the Florentines were pre-eminent in the emphasis they laid on the well-
drawn outline as the foundation of the art. Since the seventeenth century the
general idea of what constitutes the art of painting has suffered a change and
Vasari’s account of Florentine practice, in which he was himself an expert, is all the
more interesting. Vasari’s point of view is that of the frescoist. In that process,
which, as we shall see, had to be carried out swiftly and directly so as to be finished
at one sitting, it was practically necessary to have the various tints in their
gradations mixed and ready to hand. The whole method and genius of oil painting,
as moderns understand it, is different, and its processes much more varied and
subtle.

189. The innumerable sketches and finished drawings that have come down to
us from the hands of Florentine artists testify to the importance given in the school
to preliminary studies for painting, and any collection will furnish examples of the
different methods of execution here described. Drawings by Venetian masters, who
felt in colour rather than in form, are not so numerous or so elaborate.

190. That is to say, by observation of aerial as well as linear perspective.

191. This practice is noticed in the case of more than one artist of whom Vasari
has written the biography. Tintoretto is one. See also postea, p. 216.

192. See the Note on ‘Fresco Painting’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to
Painting, postea, p. 287.

193. Michelangelo’s greatest tour de force in foreshortening, much lauded by

Vasari in his Life of the master, is the figure of the prophet Jonah on the end wall
of the Sistine chapel. It is painted at the springing of the vault, on a surface that is
inclined sharply towards the spectator, but the figure is so drawn as to appear to be
leaning back in the opposite direction.

194. Correggio is responsible for many of the forced effects of drawing in the
decorative painting of vaults and ceilings in later times, but the Umbrian Melozzo
da Forlì in his painting of the Ascension of Christ, now destroyed save for the
fragments in the Quirinal and in the sacristy of St. Peter’s at Rome, may have the
doubtful honour of beginning the practice of foreshortening a whole composition,
so that the scene is painted as it would appear were we looking up at it from
underneath.

195. This truth, about the mutual influence of colours in juxtaposition, was
well put by Sir Charles Eastlake when he wrote, in his Materials for a History of
Oil Painting, ‘flesh is never more glowing than when opposed to blue, never more
pearly than when compared with red, never ruddier than in the neighbourhood of
green, never fairer than when contrasted with black, nor richer or deeper than
when opposed to white.’

196. Vitruvius describes the fresco process in his seventh Book. See Note on
‘Fresco Painting’ at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 287. This
chapter is one of the most interesting in the three ‘Introductions.’

197. Travertine, next to marble, makes when burnt the whitest lime (see § 30,
ante, p. 86). From this lime the fresco white, called bianco Sangiovanni, is made,
and Cennini gives the recipe for its preparation in his 58th chapter. The ordinary
lead white (biacca) cannot be used in fresco.

198. The word ‘tempera’ is used by Vasari and other writers as a noun
meaning (1) a substance mixed with another, as a medium with pigments (2) a
liquid in which hot steel is plunged to give it a particular molecular quality (ante, p.
30) (3) the quality thus given to the steel (ante, p. 32), while (4) it has come to
mean in modern times, as in the heading of this Note, a particular kind of painting.
It is really to be regarded as the imperative of the verb ‘temperare,’ which alike in
Latin and in Italian means ‘to divide or proportion duly,’ ‘to qualify by mixing,’ and
generally ‘to regulate’ or ‘to discipline.’ ‘Tempera’ thus means strictly ‘mix’ or
‘regulate.’ It is used in the latter sense in metallurgy, as the liquid which Vasari
calls (ante, p. 30) a ‘tempera’ (translated ‘tempering-bath’) regulates the amount of
hardness or elasticity required in the metal, and the quality the steel thus receives
is called (ante, p. 32) its ‘temper.’ In the case of painting the ‘tempera’ is the
binding material mixed with the pigment to secure its adhesion to the ground
when it is dry. The painting process is, in Italian, painting ‘a tempera’ ‘with a
mixture,’ and our expression ‘tempera painting’ is a loose one. For the form of the
word we may compare ‘recipe,’ also employed as a substantive but really an
imperative meaning ‘take.’
Strictly speaking any medium mixed with pigments makes the process one ‘a
tempera.’ Many substances may be thus used, some soluble in water, as size, gum,
honey, and the like; others insoluble in water, such as drying oils, varnishes, resins,
etc., while the inside of an egg which is in great part oleaginous may have a place
between. It is not the usage however to apply the term ‘tempera’ to drying oils or
varnishes, and a distinction is always made between ‘tempera painting’ and ‘oil
painting.’ See Note on ‘Tempera Painting,’ postea, p. 291.
 199. This practice of covering wooden panels with linen and laying over this
the gesso painting ground was in use in ancient Egypt. In fact the methods
described by Cennini of preparing and grounding panels are almost exactly the
same as those used in ancient Egypt for painting wooden mummy-cases. Even the
practice, so much used in early Italian art, of modelling details and ornaments in
relief in gesso and gilding them, is common on the mummy-cases. On the subject
of gesso see Note 5 on p. 249.

200. Vasari’s expression ‘rosso dell’ uovo o tempera, la quale è questa’ calls
attention to the fact, to which his language generally bears testimony, that he
looked upon the yolk of egg medium as the tempera par excellence. When he uses
the term ‘tempera’ alone he has the egg medium in his mind, and the size medium
is something apart. See this chapter throughout.

201. Tempera painting has had a far longer history and more extensive use
than any other kind. The technique predominated for all kinds of painting among
the older Oriental peoples and in classical lands, and was in use both on walls and
on panels in Western Europe north of the Alps during the whole mediaeval period,
while south of the Alps and at Byzantium it was to a great extent superseded for
mural painting by fresco, but remained in fashion for panels till the end of the
fifteenth century. After the fifteenth century the oil medium, as Vasari remarks,
superseded it entirely for portable pictures, and partly for work on walls and
ceilings, but in our own time there has been a partial revival of the old technique.
See Note on ‘Tempera Painting,’ postea, p. 291.
The whole question of the different vehicles and methods used in painting at
various periods is a difficult and complicated one, and too often chemical analysis
fails to give satisfactory results owing to the small amount of material available for
experiment. Berger, in his Beiträge zur Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Maltechnik,
an unfinished work that has already run to a thousand pages, goes elaborately into
the subject, but has to admit that many points are still doubtful. It makes
comparatively little difference what particular medium is used in tempera
painting, but it is of great importance to decide whether a particular class of work
is in tempera or in fresco. In connection with this Berger has reopened the old
controversy as to the technique of Pompeian wall paintings, which have been
accepted as frescoes, on the authority of Otto Dönner, for a generation past. There
are difficulties about Pompeian work and it is well that the question has again been
raised, but Berger goes much too far when he attempts to deny to the ancients the
knowledge and use of the fresco process. The evidence on this point of Vitruvius is
quite decisive, as he, and Pliny after him, refer to the process of painting on wet
plaster in the most unmistakeable terms. See Note on ‘Fresco Painting, postea, p.
287.

202. This passage about the early painters of Flanders occurs just as it stands,
with some trifling verbal differences, in Vasari’s first edition of 1550. The best
commentary on it is, first, the account of the same artists in Guicciardini’s
Descrittione di Tutti i Paesi Bassi, first published at Antwerp in 1567, and next,
Vasari’s own notes on divers Flemish artists which he added at the end of the Lives
in the second edition of 1568 (Opere, ed. Milanesi, VII, 579 f.). He there made
certain additions and corrections from Guicciardini, the most noteworthy of which
is the mention of Hubert van Eyck, whom Vasari ignores in this passage of the
Introduction, but who is just referred to by Guicciardini at the end of his sentences
on the younger brother—‘A pari a pari di Giovanni andava Huberto suo fratello, il
quale viveva, e dipingeva continuamente sopra le medesime opere, insieme con
esso fratello.’ Vasari however in the notes of 1568 goes much farther than this, and,
though he does not call Hubert the elder brother, he seems to ascribe to him
personally the supposed ‘invention’—‘Huberto suo fratello, che nel 1510 (sic) mise
in luce l’ invenzione e modo di colorire a olio’ (Opere, l.c.). ‘John of Bruges’ is of
course Jan van Eyck. Vasari writes of him at the end of the Lives as ‘John Eyck of
Bruges.’ Vasari’s statement in this sentence is of great historical importance, for it
is the first affirmation of a definite ‘invention’ of oil painting, and the first
ascription of this invention to van Eyck. As van Eyck’s own epitaph makes no
mention of this, and as oil painting was practised long before his time, Vasari’s
statement has naturally been questioned, and on the subject the reader will find a
Note at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 294.

203. It was long supposed that this picture was the ‘Epiphany’ preserved
behind the High Altar of the Church of S. Barbara, Naples, but Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in North Italy, II, 103, pronounce this ‘a feeble
and injured picture of the eighteenth century.’

204. Frederick of Urbino (there were not two of the name as Vasari supposes)
seems to have had a bathroom decorated with secular compositions by the Flemish
master. Facio, whose tract De Viris Illustribus, written in the middle of the
fifteenth century, was printed at Florence in 1745, writes, p. 46, of ‘Joannes
Gallicus’ (who can be identified as Jan van Eyck) who had painted certain ‘picturae
nobiles’ then in the possession of Cardinal Octavianus, with ‘representations of fair
women only slightly veiled at the bath.’ Such pictures were considered suitable
decorations for bath chambers. There is a curious early example of mediaeval date
in the Schloss Runkelstein near Botzen in the Tyrol, in the form of wall paintings
round a bathroom on one side of which nude figures are seen preparing to enter
the water, while on two other walls spectators of both sexes are seen looking in
through an open arcade. The pictures here referred to by van Eyck are now lost,
but by a curious coincidence attention has just been directed to an existing copy of
one of them, of which Facio gives a special notice. The copy occurs in a painting by
Verhaecht of Antwerp, 1593–1637, that represents the picture gallery of an
Antwerp connoisseur at about the date 1615. There on the wall is seen hanging the
van Eyck, that corresponds closely to the full description given by Facio. The
painting by Verhaecht was shown at Burlington House in the Winter Exhibition,
1906–7, and in the ‘Toison d’Or’ Exhibition at Bruges in 1907. See also the
Burlington Magazine, February, 1907, p. 325. It may be added that the Cardinal
Octavianus mentioned above was a somewhat obscure prelate, who received the
purple from Gregory XII in 1408.

205. The latest editors of Vasari (Opere, ed. Milanesi, I, 184) think this may be
a picture in the Museum at Naples, ascribed there to an apocryphal artist
‘Colantonio del Fiore.’ Von Wurzbach says it is by a Neapolitan painter influenced
by the Flemings.

206. Roger van der Weyden, more properly called, as by Guicciardini and by
Vasari in 1568, ‘Roger of Brussels.’ In 1449 he made a journey to Italy, and stayed
for a time at Ferrara, which under the rule of the art-loving Este was very
hospitable to foreign craftsmen. He was in Rome in 1450 and may have visited
Florence and other centres. His own style in works subsequent to this journey
shows little of Italian influence.

207. Hans Memling. ‘No Flemish painter of note,’ remark Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, Early Flemish Painters, p. 256, ‘produced pictures more attractive to
the Italians than Memling.’ The Portinari, for whom Memling worked, were
Florentine merchants who had a house at Bruges, the commercial connection of
which with Tuscany was very close. In his Notes on Flemish Painters at the end of
the Lives, Vasari says that the subject of ‘a small picture in the possession of the
Duke’ which is probably the one here mentioned, was ‘The Passion of Christ.’ If
this be the case, it cannot be the beautiful little Memling now in the Uffizi, No. 703,
for the subject of this is ‘The Virgin and Child.’ It might possibly however be the
panel of ‘The Seven Griefs,’ a Passion picture in the Museum at Turin. On the other
hand, Passavant thought the Turin panel was the ‘Careggi’ picture that Vasari goes
on to mention. See Note on p. 268 of Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s work.

208. The German editors of Vasari identified Lodovico da Luano with the
well-known painter Dierich Bouts of Louvain, but the name Ludovico (Chlodwig,
‘Warrior of Renown’) is not the same etymologically as Dierich (Theodoric, ‘Prince
of the People’). It is to be noted that in Guicciardini we find a mention of ‘Dirich da
Louano,’ who is undoubtedly Dierich Bouts (the surname is derived from St.
Rombout the patron of Haarlem, where the painter, who is also called ‘Dirick van
Haarlem’ [see below], was born) and also a mention of Vasari’s ‘Ludovico da
Luvano.’ A scrutiny however of the sentence in Guicciardini, where the last-
mentioned name occurs, shows that it is copied almost verbatim from our text of
Vasari. (Vasari [1550]:—‘Similmente Lodovico da Luano & Pietro Christa, &
maestro Martino, & ancora Giusto da Guanto, che fece la tavola della comunione
de’l Duca d’ Vrbino, & altre pitture; & Vgo d’ Anuersa, che fe la tauola di Sancta
Maria Nuoua di Fiorenza’; Guicciardini:—‘Seguirono a mano a mano Lodouico da
Louano, Pietro Crista, Martino d’ Holanda, & Giusto da Guanto, che fece quella
nobil’ pittura della comunione al Duca d’ Vrbino, & dietro a lui venne Vgo d’
Anuersa, che fece la bellissima tauola, che si vede a Firenze in santa Maria nuoua’).
Vasari is accordingly responsible for this ‘Ludovico da Luano,’ whose name is duly
chronicled in von Wurzbach’s ‘Niederländisches Künstler-Lexicon, Leipzig, 1906,
II, p. 69, on the authority of Guicciardini alone, and who is called in M. Ruelens’s
annotations to the French edition of Crowe and Cavalcaselle ‘Louys de Louvain
(peintre encore inconnu).’ Subsequently Guicciardini mentions also a ‘Dirich d’
Harlem,’ who can be none other than the same Dierick Bouts, and Vasari, as a
return favour, copies back all three Diericks into his Notes at the end of the edition
of 1568. The first ‘Ludovico’ may be merely due to a mistake in the text of Vasari
carelessly adopted by Guicciardini. Vasari’s copyist may have written ‘Ludovico’ in
place of the somewhat similar ‘Teodorico.’ There was however a certain Ludovicus
Dalmau or Dalman (D’Alamagna?), a Flemish painter who worked at Barcelona in
Spain about 1445 (von Wurzbach, sub voce) who may be meant, though there is no
indication of a connection between him and Louvain.

209. Pietro Crista is of course Petrus Christus or Christi of Bruges, an imitator,

though as Mr Weale has shown not an actual pupil, of the van Eycks. Von
Wurzbach says that Guicciardini was the first to mention his name, but Vasari in
1550 already knows him. As an explanation of the surname it has been suggested
that the artist’s father may have had a reputation as a painter or carver of Christ-
figures, so that Petrus would be called ‘son of the Christ-man.’

210. The name Martin belongs to painters of two generations in Ghent, and
von Wurzbach thinks it is the earlier of these, Jan Martins, apparently a scholar of
the van Eycks, who is referred to here, and called by Guicciardini (see above), and
by Vasari in 1568, ‘Martino d’ Holanda.’ There was a later and better known Martin
of Ghent called ‘Nabor Martin.’ The more famous ‘Martins,’ ‘of Heemskerk,’ and
‘Schongauer,’ when referred to by Vasari, have more distinct indications of their
identity. See, e.g., Opere, V, 396.

211. Justus of Ghent worked at Urbino, where he finished the altar piece
referred to by Vasari in 1474. The ‘other pictures’ may be a series of panels painted
for the library at Urbino, on which Crowe and Cavalcaselle have an interesting
paragraph, op. cit. p. 180.

212. Hugo of Antwerp is Hugo van der Goes, whose altar piece painted for S.
Maria Nuova at Florence has now been placed in the Uffizi.

213. Vasari’s stories about the connection with oil painting of Antonello da
Messina, Domenico Veneziano, and Andrea dal Castagno have of course been
subjected to a good deal of hostile criticism. Those about the two latter artists are
in the meantime relegated to the limbo of fable, but the case of Antonello da
Messina is somewhat different, and we are not dependent in his case on Vasari
alone. He certainly did not visit Flanders in the lifetime of Jan van Eyck, for this
artist died before Antonello was born, but von Wurzbach accepts as authentic a
visit on his part to Flanders between 1465 and 1475, and sees evidence of what he
learned there in his extant works (Niederländisches Künstler-Lexicon, sub voce,
‘Antonello’).

214. ‘Terre da campane,’ ‘bell earths.’ There seem to be two possible meanings
for the phrase. It may refer to the material used for the moulds in bell casting, or to
the clay from which are made the little terra-cotta bells by which children in Italy
set great store on the occasion of the mid-summer festival. This last is improbable.
Baldinucci, Vocabolario del Disegno, sub voce ‘Nero di Terra di Campana,’
says that this is a colour made out of a certain scale that forms on moulds for
casting bells or cannon, and that it is good with oil, but does not stand in fresco.
Lomazzo also mentions the pigment.

215. ‘L’abbozza’ evidently refers to the first or underpainting, not to the sketch
in chalk, for in the first edition the passage has some additional words which make
this clear. They run as follows: ‘desegnando quella: e così ne primi colori l’abozza,
il che alcuni chiamono imporre.’

216. With the above may be compared ch. 9 of Book VII of L. B. Alberti’s De Re
Aedificatoria.

217. The matter in our § 87 was added in the edition of 1568. Though Vasari
declared so unhesitatingly for fresco as the finest of all processes of painting, he
tells us that he used oil for a portion of his mural work in the Palazzo Vecchio at
Florence, when he prepared it for the residence of Duke Cosimo, and we shall
notice later his praise of tempera (postea, p. 291). Vasari describes how he painted
in oil on the walls of a refectory at Naples (Opere, VII, 674), and gives us an
interesting notice of his experiments in the technique about the year 1540 at the
monastery of the Camaldoli, near Arezzo, where he says ‘feci esperimento di unire
il colorito a olio con quello (fresco) e riuscimmi assai acconciamente’ (Opere, VII,
667). The technique required proper working out, for it was not a traditional one.
The most notable instance of its employment before the end of the fifteenth
century is in the case of the ‘Last Supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci at Milan. A
commission of experts has recently been examining the remains of this, the most
famous mural painting in the world, and has ascertained that the original process
employed by Leonardo was not pure oil painting but a mixed process in which oil
played only a part. The result at any rate, as all the world is aware, was the speedy
ruin of the work, which now only tells as a design, there being but little of its
creator’s actual handiwork now visible.
Some words of the Report are of sufficient interest to be quoted. ‘Pur troppo,
dunque, la stessa tecnica del maestro aveva in sè il germe della rovina, ben presto,
infatti, avvertita nelle sue opere murali. Spirito indagitore, innovatore, voglioso
sempre di “provare e riprovare” egli voile abbandonare i vecchi, sicuri e
sperimentati sistemi, per tentare l’ esito di sostanze oleose in miscela coi colori.
Perchè nemmeno può dirsi ch’ ei dipingesse, in questo caso, semplicemente, ad
olio come avrebbe fatto ogni altro mortale entrato nell’ errore di seguire quel
metodo anche pei muri. Egli tentò invece cosa affato nuova; poichè, se da un lato
appaiono tracce di parziali e circoscritte arricciature in uso pel fresco, dall’ altro, la
presenza delle sostanze oleose è accertata dalla mancanza di adhesione dei colori
con la superficie del muro e dalle speciali screpolature della crosta o pelle formata
dai colori stessi, non che dal modo con quale il dipinto si è andato e si va
lentamente disgregando e sfaldando.’ Bollettino d’ Arte del Ministero della
Pubblica Istruzione, Roma, 1907, I, p. 17.
Another famous instance of the use of oil paint in mural work about a
generation later is to be found in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican, where
Raphael’s pupils have left two of the decorative figures by the side of the Popes
executed in that medium. One (Urbanity) is close to the door leading to the Chapel
of Nicholas V, the other is on the wall containing the battle, and is in better
preservation than the first which is covered with wrinkles. The oil paint gives a
certain depth and richness of effect, but there is the fatal disadvantage that the
painting does not look a part of the wall as is the case with work done in fresco.
The fresco is really executed in the material of the ground, whereas oils and
varnishes have nothing in common with lime and earths, and the connection of
structure and decoration is broken. One of the most successful pieces of work of
the kind is the painting of ‘Christ at the Pillar’ by Sebastian del Piombo in S. Pietro
in Montorio at Rome. The work, which is executed on a cylindrical surface, is
rather shiny, an appearance which in mural painting is to be avoided, and it has
darkened somewhat, though this defect is not very apparent and the experiment
has on the whole succeeded well. Vasari’s Life of Fra Sebastiano contains a good
deal of information about this particular technique, which was essayed in the later
age of Italian painting more often than is sometimes imagined. It needs hardly to
be said that this oil painting on the actual plaster of the wall is a different thing
from the modern process of painting on canvas in the studio and then cementing
the completed picture on to the wall. Mural painting on canvas was introduced by
the Venetians in the fifteenth century, for at Venice atmospheric conditions seem
to have been unfavourable to the preservation of frescoes, and the Venetians
preferred canvas to plaster for their work in oils. It would be interesting to know
whether the canvas was ever fixed in situ before the painter commenced
operations, as from the point of view of the preservation of decorative effect this
would be of importance. Vasari’s story about Tintoretto’s proceedings at the Scuola
di S. Rocco (Opere, VI, 594) is evidence that canvases were painted at home and
put up on walls or ceilings when finished. Of course if a wall be covered with
canvas before the painting begins the canvas is to all intents and purposes the wall
itself, grounded in a certain way.

218. The use of canvas for the purpose in view was, as Vasari mentions below,
very common at Venice, where as early as about 1476, if we believe Vasari (Opere,
III, 156), Gentile Bellini executed in this technique the large scenic pictures with
which he adorned the Hall of Grand Council in the Ducal Palace. Such a process
would come naturally enough to Italian painters as well as to the Flemings, for they
had been accustomed from time immemorial to paint for temporary purposes on
banners and draperies, after a fashion of which Mantegna’s decorative frieze on
fine canvas at Hampton Court is a classic example. Canvas had however been
actually used for pictures even in ancient Egypt. Not only was the practice of
stretching linen over wooden panels to receive the painting ground in use there in
the time of the New Empire, but some of the recently discovered mummy-case
portraits from Egypt, of the earliest Christian centuries, are actually on canvas.
There is an example in the National Gallery. At Rome painting on canvas is
mentioned by Pliny (Hist. Nat., XXXV, 51) and Boethius (de Arithmetica, Praef., I)
says that ‘picturae ... lintea operosis elaborata textrinis ... materiam praestant.’ The
Netherland painters of the fifteenth century nearly always painted on panel, but
canvas was sometimes used, as by Roger van der Weyden in his paintings for the
Town Hall at Brussels.

219. Vasari prescribes ‘due o tre macinate’ of white lead for mixture with the
flour and nut oil for the priming of canvas. A ‘macinata’ was the amount placed at
one time on the ‘macina’ or stone for grinding colours. Berger suggests ‘handfuls’
as a translation, but the amount would be small, as for careful grinding only one or
two lumps of the pigment would be dealt with at one time.

220. The Ducal Palace, that adjoins S. Marco, is probably the building in
Vasari’s mind. The Library of S. Marco, Sansovino’s masterpiece, might also be
meant, as this was called sometimes the Palace of S. Marco. We must remember
however that, as noticed before, ante, p. 56, this building, at the time of Vasari’s
visit to Venice, was still unfinished.

221. On panels and canvases as used at Venice Vasari has an interesting note
at the beginning of his Life of Jacopo Bellini (Opere, III, 152). This was a subject
that would at once appeal to his practical mind when he visited the city. He notices
incidentally that the usual woods for panels were ‘oppio’ acer campestris, maple;
or ‘gattice,’ the populus alba of Horace, but that the Venetians used only fir from
the Alps. (Cennini, c. 113, recommends poplar or lime or willow. Pliny, Hist. Nat.,
XVI, 187, speaks of larch and box, and Ilg says that northern painters generally used
oak.) The Venetian preference for canvas, Vasari says, was due to the facts that it
did not split nor harbour worms, was portable, and could be obtained of the size
desired; this last he notes too in our text. Berger (Beiträge, IV, 29), gives the
meaning of ‘Grossartigkeit’ to the word ‘grandezza’ used above by Vasari, but of
course it only means material size, not ‘grandeur’ in an aesthetic sense.

222. See ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, § 13, ante, p. 54. The stone is a species
of slate. Slate is suitable for painting on. See Church’s Chemistry of Paints and
Painting, 1890, p. 21.

223. Greek paintings on marble panels have come down to us from various
periods of ancient art. Some early Attic specimens on tombstones are in the
museums of Athens, and at Herculaneum there was found an interesting painting
on marble of a group of Greek heroines playing at knuckle bones. A much earlier
slab with a figure of a warrior is in the Acropolis Museum at Athens.

224. These chiaroscuri or monochromes are characteristic of the later

Renaissance. They may either be frankly decorative, and in this form obey the rules
of all other pictorial enrichment; or they may have an illusive intention, and be
designed to produce the appearance on a flat wall of architectural members or
sculptured or cast-bronze reliefs. In this case, when on monumental buildings and
permanent, they are insincere and opposed to sound decorative principles, though
on temporary structures they are quite in place. Vasari was a famous adept at the
construction and adornment of such fabrics, which were in great demand for the
numerous Florentine pageants and processions. See his letters, passim.

225. There are examples of painted imitations of bronze in Michelangelo’s

frescoes on the vault of the Sistine. The medallions held by the pairs of decorative
figures of youths on the cornice are painted to represent reliefs in this metal.
Raphael’s Stanze and Loggie also furnish instances, and there are good examples
on the external façade of the Palazzo Ricci at Rome.

226. The clay or earth that Vasari speaks of forms the body of the ‘distemper’
or ‘gouache,’ as it would be called respectively in Britain and in France, and takes
the place of the ‘whitening’ used in modern times. Baldinucci in his Vocabolario
explains ‘Terra di cava o Terretta’ as ‘the earth (clay) with which vessels for the
table are made, that mixed with pounded charcoal is used by painters for
backgrounds and monochromes, and also for primings, and with a tempera of size
for the canvases with which are painted triumphal arches, perspectives, and the
like.’ It is of very fine and even texture, and Baldinucci says it was found near St.
Peter’s at Rome, and also in great quantity at Monte Spertoli, thirteen miles from
Florence.

227. This process of wetting the back of the canvas is to be noted. The chief
inconvenience of the kind of work here spoken of is that it dries very quickly, and
dries moreover very much lighter than when the work is wet. Hence it is an
advantage to keep the ground wet as long as possible till the tints are properly
fused, so that all may dry together. Wetting the back of the canvas secures this end.
The technique that Vasari is describing is the same as that of the modern theatrical
scene-painter, and would be called ‘distemper painting.’ The colours are mixed
with whitening, or finely-ground chalk, and tempered with size. The whitening
makes them opaque and gives them ‘body,’ but is also the cause of their drying
light. F. Lloyds, in his Practical Guide to Scene Painting and Painting in
Distemper, Lond. 1879, says (p. 42) ‘In the study of the art of distemper painting, a
source of considerable embarrassment to the inexperienced eye is that the colours
when wet present such a different appearance from what they do when dry.’

228. Does Vasari mean by ‘tempera’ yolk of egg? It has this sense with him
sometimes, as in the heading of chapter VI.
 229. Cennini in his 67th chapter gives directions for preparing the mixed
colour he calls verdaccio. It was a compound of white, dark ochre, black and red.

230. The principle of sgraffito-work, that is the scratching through a thin

superimposed coat to bring to view an under layer of a different colour, seems to
have been established first in pottery making, and in this connection the Italians
called it ‘Sgraffiato.’ The adoption of the process for the decoration of surfaces of
plaster or cement was an innovation of the Renaissance, and Vasari appears to
have been the first writer who gives a recipe for it. According to his account in the
Lives, it was a friend of Morto da Feltro, the Florentine Andrea di Cosimo, who
first started the work, and Vasari describes the process he employed in phrases
that correspond with the wording of the present chapter (Opere, ed. Milanesi, V,
207). A modern expert describes the process as follows: ‘A wall is covered with a
layer of tinted plaster, and on this is superimposed a thin coating of white plaster.
The outer coat is scratched through, and the colour behind it is revealed. Then all
the white surface outside the design is cut away, and a cameo-like effect given to
the design. This is the art of Sgraffito as known to the Italian Renaissance’
(Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1889, p. 125). The process dropped out of use after a
while, but was revived in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly
through the agency of the architect Gottfried Semper, the author of Der Stil. It is
sometimes used in our own country both on monumental and on domestic
buildings, and as it is simple and cheap and permanent it is well fitted for modern
use in our climate. The back of the Science School in Exhibition Road, S.
Kensington, was covered with sgraffiti by the pupils of the late F. W. Moody about
1872. They would be the better now for a cleansing with the modern steam-blast.

231. See the Notes on ‘Enriched Façades,’ and ‘Stucco “Grotesques,”’ at the
close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, pp. 298, 299.

232. This passage presents some difficulty. It runs ‘Dunque, quelle che vanno
in campo bianco, non ci essendo il campo di stucco per non essere bianca la calce,
si dà per tutto sottilmente il campo di bianco.’ Vasari seems to have in his mind the
difference between ordinary plaster made, as he has just described, of ‘lime mixed
with sand in the ordinary fashion,’ which would not be white, and what he calls
‘stucco,’ by which term is probably meant the finer plaster made of white lime from
travertine and marble dust. Ordinary plaster has accordingly to be coated with
white before the work begins.

233. Examples of this whimsical style of decoration are abundant in the

Pompeian wall paintings, and the mind of Vitruvius was much exercised about
their frivolity and want of meaning (De Architectura, VII, v).

234. Vasari is not very clear in his account of these methods of work, but it is
enough to know that both by the ancients, and at the time of the Renaissance,
colour was used largely in connection with these reliefs, and the combination could
of course take several forms. In the loggia of the Villa Farnesina, where Raphael
worked with his assistants, there are painted panels in fresco framed in mouldings
of stucco, modelled plaster figures in white against a coloured ground, coloured
stuccoes against coloured fields, and tinted bands separating the framed plaster
medallions. The same kind of work is found in the Loggie of the Vatican, the Doria
Palace at Genoa, and other localities innumerable. Plate XII shows a characteristic
section of the decoration of the Vatican Loggie.

235. As in the work described at the close of ch. XII (the beginning of the
present section).

236. The word ‘bolus’ is derived from the Greek βῶλος, a lump or clod, and
means, according to Murray’s Dictionary, a pill, or a small rounded mass of any
substance, and also a kind of reddish clay or earth, used medically for its astringent
properties, that was brought from Armenia, and called by the pharmacologist ‘bole
armeniac.’ Its use in the arts is due to its unctuous character, which made gold
adhere to it. See below. In mediaeval illuminations a ‘bolus’ or small lump of a
properly prepared gesso is generally laid on the parchment where gold is to come,
so that the raised surface may give the polished metal more effect. The gold over
the bolus was always burnished. It may be noticed that our word ‘size’ is really
‘assise,’ the bed or layer under gilding, for which a gluey substance was suitable.

237. A ‘mordant’ as the word implies is some corrosive liquid, such as is used
by dyers to bite into the fabric and carry in with it the colouring matter. The word
is also employed, as in this passage, for a glutinous size used as ground for gilding,
such as the modern decorator’s ‘gold-size.’ Gold laid in this way has a ‘mat’ surface.

238. The scudo was worth in Tuscany about four-and-sixpence of our money.
In Florence its value was a little greater.

239. See Note 1, ante, p. 248.

240. For the various processes of preparing a panel for painting and for
gilding reference must be made to Cennini’s Trattato, where many technical
matters are elucidated that Vasari passes over almost without notice. It must be
remembered that Cennini writes as a tempera painter, while in Vasari’s time these
elaborate processes were falling out of use. In his chapters 115–119, Cennini gives
recipes for what he calls ‘gesso grosso’ and ‘gesso sottile.’ They are made of the
same materials, ‘volterrano,’ or plaster from Volterra, which is a sulphate of lime
corresponding to our ‘plaster of Paris,’ and size made from parchment shreds; but
the plaster for ‘gesso sottile’ is more finely prepared. The plaster, produced by
calcining gypsum, is first thoroughly slaked by being drenched with water till it
loses all tendency to ‘set,’ and is then as a powder or paste mixed with the heated
size. The size makes the composition dry quite hard, and Cennini speaks of its
having a surface like ivory.

241. See Note 2, ante, p. 248.

 242. This we should call ‘shell gold.’ It is in common use. The employment of
the shell represents a very ancient tradition, for shells were the usual receptacles
for pigments in late classical and Early Christian times.

243. This is excellent advice. The architectural character of mosaic decoration,

the distance of the work from the eye, the nature of the technique and material, all
invite to a broad and simple treatment, such as we find in the best mosaics at
Ravenna and Rome. Modern work is often too elaborate and too minute in detail.

244. A modern would say that if the work be really inlaid, it should look like
inlaid work, and not like something else. In the Italy of Vasari’s day however, as we
have seen, painting had so thoroughly got the upper hand, that to ape the nobler
art would seem a legitimate ambition for the mosaicist.

245. The durability of mosaic depends on the cement in which the cubes are
embedded and on the care taken in their setting. The pieces themselves are
indestructible but they will sometimes drop out from the wall. Hence extensive
restorations have been carried out on the Early Christian mosaics at Ravenna and
other places.

246. In his Proemio delle Vite (Opere, I, 242) Vasari explains what he means
by the words ‘antique’ and ‘old.’ The former refers to the so-called ‘classical’ epoch
before Constantine; the latter to the Early Christian and early mediaeval period,
prior to the Italian revival of the thirteenth century.

247. At S. Costanza (see Note 5, ante, p. 27) on the vault of the aisle there are
decorative mosaics of the time of Constantine showing vine scrolls issuing out of
vases, and classical genii gathering the grapes. Birds are introduced among the
tendrils.

248. The mosaics at Ravenna and S. Marco, Venice, are well known. In the
Duomo at Pisa, in the apse, there still remains the Saviour in Glory between the
Madonna and John the Baptist, designed by a certain Cimabue, and the only
existing work which modern criticism would accept as from the hand of the
traditional father of Florentine painting. It may however have been another painter
nicknamed ‘Cimabue,’ who worked at Pisa early in the fourteenth century. The
mosaics of the Tribune of the Baptistry at Florence were executed in 1225 by
Jacobus, a monk of the Franciscan Order, and this fact is attested by an inscription
in mosaic which forms part of the work.

249. This mosaic, called the ‘Navicella,’ represents the Gospel ship manned by
Christ and the disciples, with Peter struggling in the waves. It has been so much
restored that little if any of Giotto’s work remains in it. It was replaced in the
seventeenth century, after some wanderings, in the porch of the present Basilica,
but Vasari saw it of course in the porch of the old, or Constantinian, church, the
entrance end of which was still standing in his day.
 250. This mosaic was executed at the end of the fifteenth century by Domenico
Ghirlandajo and his brother over the northern door of the nave of the cathedral of
Florence. It is still in situ but has been greatly restored. The date 1490 is
introduced in the composition.

251. This corresponds with modern practice. The following is from a paper by
Mr James C. Powell, who, as practical worker in glass, has been engaged with Sir
W. B. Richmond in the decoration in mosaic of the vaults of St Paul’s. ‘The glass
which is rendered opaque by the addition of oxide of tin, is coloured as required by
one of the metallic oxides; this is melted in crucibles placed in the furnace, and
when sufficiently fused is ladled out in small quantities on to a metal table, and
pressed into circular cakes about eight inches in diameter and from three-eighths
to half an inch in thickness; these are then cooled gradually in a kiln, and when
cold are ready for cracking up into tesserae, which can be further subdivided as the
mosaicist requires. It is the fractured surface that is used in mosaic generally, as
that has a pleasanter surface and a greater richness of colour; the thickness of the
cake, therefore, regulates the limit of the size of the tesserae, and the fractured
surface gives that roughness of texture which is so valuable from an artistic point
of view.’ (Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1893–4, p. 249).

252. This is a point attended to by the best modern workers in mosaic. Where
gold backgrounds are used it is advisable to carry the gold into the figures by using
it as Vasari suggests for the lights on the draperies. If this were not done the figures
would be liable to tell as dull masses against the more brilliant ground. The use of
gold backgrounds is specially Byzantine. The earlier mosaics at Rome and at
Ravenna have backgrounds of blue generally of a dark shade, which is particularly
fine at Ss. Cosma e Damiano at Rome and in the tomb of Galla Placidia at Ravenna.
The mosaics at S. Sophia at Constantinople of the sixth century had gold
backgrounds, and this is the case also with all the later examples in Italy from the
ninth and tenth centuries onwards. The finest displays of these varied fields of
gold, now deep now lustrous of hue, are to be seen in S. Sophia, S. Marco at Venice,
and the Cappella Palatina at Palermo.
Vasari’s account of the fabrication of the gilded tesserae required for this part
of the work is quite clear and agrees with modern practice. The gold leaf is
hermetically sealed between two sheets of glass by the fusion of a thin film over it.
The technique of the ‘fondi d’ oro,’ or glass vessels adorned with designs in gold,
found in the Roman catacombs, was of the same nature.

253. It has been noticed at some places, as at Torcello, that before the cubes
were laid in the soft cement the whole design was washed in in colour on the
surface of the cement. This facilitated correct setting and avoided any appearance
of white cement squeezed up in the interstices between the cubes. On this
particular feature of the mosaic technique Berger has founded an ingenious theory
of the origin of painting in fresco. It is his thesis, in his Beiträge zur Entwicklungs-
Geschichte der Maltechnik, I, München, 1904, that the ancients did not employ the
fresco process, but that this was evolved in early mediaeval days out of the mosaic
technique as seen, e.g., at Torcello. The stucco, that Vasari describes, must be put
on portion by portion, for it only keeps soft two or three days, and can only be used
for setting the cubes while in a moist state. Now, Berger contends, if the design for
the mosaic be painted in colours on the wet stucco, and the whole allowed to dry,
without any use of the mosaic cubes, we should have a painting in fresco, and he
imagines that fresco painting began in this way. Unfortunately for the theory, (1),
the testimony of Vitruvius and Pliny is absolutely decisive in favour of the
knowledge in antiquity of the fresco technique, and, (2), the use of the coloured
painting on the stucco as a guide for the setting of the cubes was not normal, and
can never have been used so freely as to give rise to a new technique of painting. As
a fact, this colouring of the stucco is objected to by the best modern workers on
aesthetic grounds, for they point out that the lines of grey cement between the
coloured cubes answer to the lead lines in the stained glass window, and should be
reckoned with by the designer as part of his artistic effect. No doubt the older
mosaicists, like the workers in stained glass, instinctively apprehended this, and
had no desire for the coloured cement.

254. One would expect here ‘lime of travertine,’ for what Vasari must mean is
lime prepared by burning this stone, which he recommends elsewhere, e.g.
‘Architettura,’ cap. iv, and ‘Scultura,’ cap. vi (calce di trevertino). The cement here
given is a lime cement mixed with water. A sort of putty mixed with boiled oil is
also employed, and is said to have been introduced by Girolamo Muziano of
Brescia, a contemporary of Vasari. Each mosaic worker seems to have his own
special recipe for this compound.

255. The process described by Vasari of building up the mosaic in situ, tessera
by tessera, according to the design pounced portion by portion on the soft cement,
is the most direct and by far the most artistic, and was employed for all the fine
mosaics of olden time. In modern days labour-saving appliances have been tried,
though it is satisfactory to know that they are all again discarded in the best work
of to-day, such as that of Sir W. B. Richmond in St. Paul’s. One of the methods
referred to, which can be carried out in the studio, is to take a reversed tracing of
the design, covered with gum, and place the cubes face downwards upon it
according to the colour scheme. When they are all in position, as far as can be
judged when working from the back, a coating of cement is laid over them and they
are thus fixed in their places. The whole sheet is then lifted up and cemented in its
proper place on the wall, the drawing to which the faces of the cubes are gummed
being afterwards removed by wetting. A better plan than this is called by the
Italians ‘Mosaico a rivoltatura.’ For this process the tesserae are laid, face upwards,
in a bed of pozzolana, slightly damp, which forms a temporary joint between the
adjacent cubes. Coarse canvas is pasted over the face of the work; it is lifted up,
and the pozzolana brushed out of the interstices. The whole is then applied to the
wall surface and pressed into the cement with which this has been coated. When
the cement has set the canvas is removed from the face.
 256. The Duomo of Siena is a veritable museum of floor decorations in incised
outlines and in black and white, in the various processes described by Vasari.
There is a good notice of them in Labarte, Histoire des Arts Industriels. None of
the work is as early as the time of Duccio, but Beccafumi executed a large amount
of it. See the Life of that artist by Vasari.
It is worthy of notice that Dante had something of this kind in his thoughts,
when in the 12th Canto of the Purgatorio he describes the figure designs on the
ground of the first circle of Purgatory.

‘So saw I there ...

... with figures covered
Whate’er of pathway from the mount projects.

· · · · ·

O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes

Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced,
Between thy seven and seven children slain!
O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword
Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa
That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew!

· · · · ·

Whoe’er of pencil master was or stile,

That could portray the shades and traits which there
Would cause each subtle genius to admire?
Dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive;
Better than I saw not who saw the truth,
All that I trod upon while bowed I went.’
Longfellow’s Translation.

257. See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ ante, p. 119.

258. The Appartamento Borgia still contains a good display of these variegated
tiles; the original ones are however rather the worse for wear. In the Life of
Raphael, Vasari says they were supplied by the della Robbia of Florence. In the
Castle of S. Angelo there is a collection of interesting specimens of the tiles Vasari
goes on to mention. They are in cases in the Sala della Giustizia, and exhibit the
devices of Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, Paul III, and other Popes. The pavement
of the Laurentian Library at Florence is laid with tiles showing a very effective
design of yellow upon red. They are ascribed to Tribolo.

259. Was this the road from Seravezza seawards which Michelangelo had
begun? See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ ante, p. 119. Specimens of these
Stazzema breccias are shown as C, D, on the Frontispiece.
 260. Lat. Evonymus Europaeus. The only English example of the family is the
spindle tree.

261. The Lemonnier editors say that this work is lost. Of course Vasari is
speaking of the Old St. Peter’s, not the present structure.

262. Fra Damiano of Bergamo is mentioned by Vasari in his Life of Francesco

Salviati (Opere, ed. Milanesi, VII).

263. Inlays of different coloured woods, forming what is known as tarsia work,
and sometimes as marqueterie, compose an easily understood kind of decoration
that has been practised especially in the East from time immemorial. There is
however a special interest attaching to this work in the Italy of the fifteenth
century, in that it was connected with the studies in perspective that had so potent
an influence on the general artistic progress of the time. For some reason that is
not clearly apparent the designs for this work often took the form of buildings and
city views in perspective, and artists amused themselves in working out in this
form problems in that indispensable science. The history of the craft is so
instructive that it is worth a special Note, which the reader will find at the end of
this ‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 303.

264. ‘The onyx marbles of Algeria, Mexico, and California (which are of the
same nature as the Oriental alabasters) can be cut and ground sufficiently thin for
window purposes’ (Mr W. Brindley in Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1887, p. 53). See also
ante, p. 43.

265. The ‘occhi’ of Vasari correspond to the old-fashioned ‘bull’s-eyes’ which

are still to be seen surviving in cottage windows. The ‘bull’s eye’ pane was the
middle part of a sheet of so-called ‘crown’ glass where was attached the iron rod or
tube with which the mass of molten glass was extracted from the furnace, before,
by rotation of the rod, it was spread out into the form of a sheet. When the rod was
ultimately detached a knob remained, and this part of the sheet was used for
glazing as a cheap ‘waste product.’ In connection with the modern revival in
domestic architecture, for which Mr Norman Shaw deserves a good deal of the
credit, these rough panes have come again into fashion, and manufacturers make
them specially and supply them at the price of an artistic luxury! In Vasari’s time
they were evidently quite common, and we find numerous specimens represented
in the pictures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The bedroom of S. Ursula in
Carpaccio’s picture at Venice; the cell of S. Jerome in Dürer’s engraving; the room
in which van Eyck paints Arnolfini and his wife, those in which Jost Amman’s
‘Handworkers’ are busy, etc., etc., have casements glazed in this fashion, the knob,
called in English ‘bullion,’ in French ‘boudine,’ in German ‘Butzen,’ being distinctly
represented as in relief.

266. The ‘telajo di legno’ is a window frame of wood such as we are familiar
with in modern days, only in olden times these were often made detachable and
taken about from place to place when lords and ladies changed their domicile.
When Julius II wanted Bramante to fill some windows of the Vatican with coloured
glass, it was found that the French ambassador to the Papal court had brought a
painted window in such a frame from his own country, and the sight of this led to
the invitation to Rome of French artists in this material. See infra, Note 5.

267. See Note on ‘The Stained Glass Window’ at the close of this
‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 308.

268. Vasari wrote the life of this artist, who had been his own teacher in early
years at Arezzo (Opere, IV, 417). Gaye, Carteggio, II, 449, gives documentary
evidence that he was the son of a certain Pierre de Marcillat, and was born at S.
Michel in the diocese of Verdun in France. His name therefore has nothing to do
with Marseilles, which moreover is not in a glass-painting locality, whereas
Verdun, between France and Germany, is just in the region where the art was
developed and flourished. Guglielmo and another Frenchman named Claude came
to Rome about 1508 in the circumstances described in the foregoing Note, and
made some windows for the Sala Regia of the Vatican and other parts of the Palace.
These have all perished, but there still survive two windows from their hands in the
choir of S. Maria del Popolo, on which are the name and arms of Pope Julius II.
They are placed north and south behind and above the high altar, and have each
three lights. They contain scenes from the lives of Christ and the Madonna, in
which the figures are carefully drawn but the colour is patchy. Though the reds are
clear and strong, there is a good deal of grey and the architectural backgrounds are
rather muddy in hue. The artist was invited from Rome to Cortona and from
thence to Arezzo, which as Vasari notices in the beginning of his Life remained his
home to the end. He executed many windows there, in the cathedral and in S.
Francesco, some of which still remain; and also works in fresco. Vasari declares
that he owed to his teaching the first principles of art.
On the whole subject of the glass-painting craft see the Note on ‘The Stained
Glass Window,’ postea, p. 308, where the curious confusion of two different
processes, between which Vasari’s treatment oscillates, is elucidated.

269. The significance of Vasari’s demand for transparency in glass is explained

in the Note, postea, p. 308.

270. It is somewhat remarkable that the Venetians, who practised the art of
glass mosaic from about the ninth century, and in the thirteenth began their
famous glass works, never achieved anything in the technique of the stained glass
window. Venetian glass vessels, like the glorious lamps from the Cairo Mosques,
owe much of their beauty to the fact that the material is not clarified but possesses
a beautiful warm tone. It is indeed more difficult to get clear glass than tinted.

271. For the most part this description, with the exception of the part about
scaling-off glass in order to introduce a variety in colour, corresponds closely with
the technical directions which Theophilus gives so fully and clearly in his Schedula
Diversarum Artium of about 1100 A.D. It is pretty clear that Vasari is telling us here
what he learned from William of Marcillat who would have inherited the traditions
of the great French glass-painters of the thirteenth century.

272. The ‘scaglia’ is the thin scale that comes off heated iron when cooling
under the hammer, and is collected from the floors of smithies. Vasari thinks of it
as a ‘rust’ ‘ruggine,’ because rusty iron scales off in much the same way, the cause
in both cases probably being oxidization. Hence the expression ‘another rust.’

273. The pigments or pastes that are to be fused on to the coloured glass, to
modify its hue or to indicate details, are powdered and mixed with gum for
convenience in application. The gum is not to serve as permanent binding material
as the pastes are subsequently fused and burnt in on the glass.

274. It will be understood that the glass subjected to this treatment is not
coloured in the mass, or what is called ‘pot-metal,’ but has a film of colour ‘flashed’
or spread thinly on a clear sheet. This is done with certain colours, such as the
admired ruby red, because a piece coloured in the mass would be too opaque for
effect. Economy may also be a consideration, as the ruby stain is a product of gold.

275. The composition, which when fused stains the glass yellow, may before
fusion be of a red hue. As a rule the yellow stain on glass is produced by silver.
Vasari does not say what his composition is.

276. The red film is what Vasari understands by the ‘painting.’ This might fuse
and run with the heat required to fuse the yellow.

277. That is, the space where the yellow leaf is to come may be cleared of the
red film after the yellow leaf has been painted on the back, as well as before that
process. The process Vasari describes of introducing small details of a particular
colour into a field of another hue is a good deal employed by modern workers in
glass, but it was not known to Theophilus, or much used in the palmy days of the
art, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

278. In Theophilus’s time these convenient leads grooved on both sides, which
are still in use, were not invented. He directs the worker to bind strips of lead
round each piece of glass and then solder together the leads when the pieces so
bound are brought into juxtaposition.

279. ‘Niello’ is from the mediaeval Latin ‘nigellum,’ ‘black,’ and refers to the
black composition with which engraved lines in metal plates were filled, according
to the process detailed by Vasari.

280. It is curious that the chapter ends without any discussion of the chasing
of gold and silver plate.
 281. To some small extent the ancients do seem to have filled the engraved
lines in their bronze or silver plates with colouring matter, and the known
examples are described in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, art.
‘Chrysographia,’ p. 1138. Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXIII, 46, gives a recipe, as used by the
Egyptians, for a material for colouring silver that corresponds with the
composition used for niello work, though the use he indicates seems rather that of
an artificial patina than a filling for incisions. In any case the use of such a filling in
antiquity was quite uncommon, for the innumerable incised designs on the backs
of Greek and Etruscan mirrors and on caskets like the Ficeronian Cista show no
indication of the process, though of course in the lapse of time the incisions have
acquired a darker tinge than the smooth surfaces of the metal, and Vasari may
have seen them filled with accidental impurities.

282. A burin is shown in Fig. 2, D, ante, p. 48.

283. Vasari makes no mention here of sulphur, which in the recipes given by
Pliny, Theophilus, and Cellini, is a constant constituent of the black amalgam.
Silver and lead alone would not give the black required.

284. The ‘Pax,’ Italian ‘pace,’ was a little tablet of metal or some other material
used in churches to transmit the kiss of peace from the priest to the people. Certain
paxes once in the Baptistry of Florence have now found their way through the
Uffizi to the Museum in the Bargello, but experts are not agreed as to the
ascription of particular examples to Finiguerra. See Milanesi’s note on this artist at
the close of Vasari’s Life of Marc Antonio Raimondi (Opere, V, 443).

285. In Vasari’s first edition, of 1550, there is a notice of Finiguerra in the Life
of Antonio Pollaiuolo (p. 498) and he there celebrates only the skill of Maso as a
niellist, but in the edition of 1568 there is another notice of him in connection with
Marc Antonio (Opere, ed. Milanesi, V, 395), and here Vasari claims for him the
credit of being the first to make the advance from niello work to copper-plate
engraving. This second passage is a famous one, and describes how Finiguerra
moulded his silver plate, incised with a design, in clay, and then cast it in sulphur,
and subsequently filled the hollow lines in the sulphur cast (which reproduced the
incisions on the silver plate) with lamp-black, so that they showed up more clearly.
He then seems, according to Vasari, to have pressed damp paper against the
sulphur plaque so treated, and obtained a print by extracting the black from the
lines. Benvenuto Cellini however, a better authority than Vasari on Finiguerra,
praises him as the best niello worker of his time, but says nothing about this
further development of his craft, and on the contrary ascribes the invention of
copper-plate engraving to the Germans. Cellini tells us at the end of his
‘Introduzione,’ that in 1515, when fifteen years old, he began to learn the
goldsmith’s trade, and that then, though the art of niello work had greatly declined,
the older goldsmiths sang in his ears the praise of Maso Finiguerra, who had died
in 1464. Hence, Cellini says, he gave special attention to niello work, and he
describes the process, at rather greater length than Vasari, in the first chapter of
his Treatise on Gold-work (I Trattati, etc. di Benvenuto Cellini, ed. Milanesi,
Firenze, 1893).
The question of the origin of copper-plate engraving need not be here
discussed. Any of the incised silver or bronze plaques of the ancients might have
been printed from; and as a fact some incised bronze discs that are placed at the
bottoms of the towers in the great crown-light of the twelfth century in the Minster
at Aachen have actually been put through the printing press and the impressions
published, though no one at the time they were made can have thought of printing
from them. In the same way wooden stamps in relief were used by Egyptians and
Romans for impressing the damp clay of their bricks, though no one seems to have
thought of multiplying impressions on papyrus or parchment. So trial impressions
of niello plates, before the lines were filled in permanently, may often have been
made, and not by Finiguerra alone. The idea of multiplying such impressions on
their own account is now universally credited to the Germans, and this seems also
to have been the opinion of Cellini. See his ‘Introduzione.’

286. That is to say, the bottoms of cups or chalices. There are notices of
armorial insignia, enamelled at the bottom of cups of gold used by some of the
French kings, in Labarte, Histoire des Arts Industriels.

287. Giulio: a piece coined under Pope Julius II, of the same value as the
‘paolo,’ and equivalent to 56 centesimi, or about 5½d. of our money.

288. That is, the outlines of the different figures, ornaments, or other objects
executed in low relief on the metal. See the Note on ‘Vasari’s Description of Enamel
Work’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 311.

289. ‘The other kind’ probably refers to the incisions on the niello plates of
which he has been speaking. These are hollow, or in intaglio, whereas the work he
is here describing is in relief.

290. ‘Si fermino col martello.’ The only practicable use of the hammer in
connection with enamels is to pound the lumps of vitreous paste to a more or less
fine powder, in which form they are placed over the metal. Theophilus, in chapter
53 of his third Book, ‘de Electro,’ ‘on Enamel,’ introduces the hammer in a similar
connection: ‘Accipiensque singulas probati vitri ... quod mox confringas cum
rotundo malleo donec subtile fiat;’ ‘take portions of the glass you have tested ... and
break up each lump with a round headed hammer till it be finely powdered.’ Cellini
also says the pastes are to be pounded in a mortar ‘con martello.’ Trattati, p. 30. It
is not easy however to see how any sense of ‘pounding’ can be extracted from the
verb ‘fermare’ which Vasari uses.

291. The difference in colour between gold and silver will naturally affect the
choice of the transparent vitreous pastes that are to cover them, and there are also
considerations of a chemical kind which prevent the use of certain pastes on
certain metal grounds. For example tin has the property of rendering transparent
enamels opaque, and transparent pastes cannot be used over metal grounds
wherein tin enters into the composition. Cellini, who gives the same caution as
Vasari, takes as an illustration transparent ruby coloured enamel, which he says
cannot be used over silver, for a reason which has about it a reminiscence of the
ancient alchemy, namely, that it is a product of gold and must be employed only
over its kindred metal! On the other hand he forbids for use with gold yellow,
white, and turquoise blue. We are indebted for some special information on this
highly technical subject to the kindness of Mr H. H. Cunynghame, C.B., who
writes: ‘There are two distinct reasons why different enamels are used on silver and
gold respectively. The first is an artistic reason. Transparent reds do not show well
over silver, the rays reflected from a silver surface not being well calculated to
show off the colours of the gold. In fact silver absorbs those rays on the
transmission of which the beauty of gold-red largely depends, whence then it
follows that transparent blues and greens should be used on silver, and reds,
browns, and the brighter yellows on gold. In addition to this, silver has its surface
disturbed by the silicic acid in the enamel. The consequence is that ordinary
enamels put on a silver surface are stained. To prevent this it is desirable to add
some ingredient that dissolves and renders colourless the stain. For this purpose
therefore special fluxes or clear enamels are made for silver. They usually contain
manganese and arsenic. The first of these has such a property of “clarifying”
enamels and glazes that it used to be called the potter’s “soap,” for it cleaned the
glazes on china. The other is also used for the same purpose.... As silver alloy is
more easy to melt than gold alloy, fluxes, i.e. clear enamels for silver, are much
more fusible than those for gold.’

292. This is a practice of modern enamellers. Cellini however is against it, as if

the enamels begin again to run there is a danger of losing the truth of the surface.
He recommends polishing by hand alone (Trattati, ed. Milanesi, 35).

293. This may have been the so-called Venetian enamel used in Vasari’s time.
This was a form of opaque painted enamel over copper, extremely decorative, but
coarse as compared with the translucent enamel over reliefs. We owe this
suggestion to Sir T. Gibson Carmichael.

294. The word ‘Tausia,’ and its connection with ‘Tarsia,’ the term used for
wood inlays, has given rise to some discussion. The explanation in Bucher’s
Geschichte der Technischen Künste, III, 14, is probably correct, and according to
this the Italian ‘Tausia’ comes from the Spanish ‘Tauscia’ or ‘Atauscia,’ which is
derived from an Arabic root meaning ‘to decorate.’ The art of inlaying one metal in
another is one of great antiquity in the East, and was no doubt brought to Spain by
the Moors, from which country, perhaps by way of Sicily, it spread to Italy. The
word ‘Tarsia,’ applied as we have already seen to inlays in wood, may have been
derived by corruption from ‘Tausia,’ though, as the form ‘Intarsia’ is also common,
a derivation (unlikely) has been suggested from the Latin ‘Interserere.’ The ‘in’ is
probably only the preposition, that has become incorporated with the word it
preceded.

295. ‘Cavasi il ferro in sotto squadra.’

296. If the sinkings be undercut the further process of roughening the sunk
surfaces is hardly necessary, but the roughening or puncturing may suffice to hold
the inlaid metal when there is no actual undercutting of the sides of the sinkings.

297. The ‘filiera,’ or iron plate pierced with holes of various sizes for drawing
wires through, was known to Theophilus. See chapter 8 of Book III of the Schedula,
‘De ferris per quae fila trahuntur.’

298. Vasari does not attempt to deal with the art of wood engraving in general
nor need this Note traverse the whole subject. In all these later chapters of the
‘Introduction’ to Painting he is dealing with forms of the decorative art in which
various materials are put together so as to produce something of the effect of a
picture. Hence all that he envisages in the department of wood engraving are what
are called chiaroscuri, or engravings meant to produce the effect of shaded
drawings by tints rather than by the lines which constitute engravings proper. It
has been noticed that some writers on engraving, (ante, p. 20) have denied to these
imitated light-and-shade drawings the character of true engravings.
As we have seen to be the case with copper-plate engraving (ante, p. 275)
priority is now claimed in these chiaroscuri for Germany over Italy, and Ugo da
Carpi, who was born about 1450, near Bologna, becomes rather the improver of a
German process than the inventor of a new one. On July 24, 1516, when resident in
Venice he petitions the Signoria of that city for privilege for his ‘new method of
printing in light and shade, a novel thing and not done before.’ Lippmann (The Art
of Wood Engraving in Italy in the Fifteenth Century, trans., London, 1888) thinks
that this claim may be true ‘in so far as he may have introduced further
developments in the practice of colour printing with several blocks, which still
survived in Venice, especially after the production of coloured wood-cuts by
Burgkmair and Cranach in Germany had given fresh stimulus to a more artistic
cultivation of that method’ (p. 69), and that ‘he gave the art an entirely new
development based upon the principles which guided the profession of painting’
(p. 136). This last phrase explains the interest that Vasari here manifests in his
work. In the older wood engraving only lines had been left on the block to take the
ink, the rest of the surface being cut away, and whatever was to be shown in the
print was displayed in the lines alone. In the new method broad surfaces of the
wood were left, on which was spread a film of ink or pigment, and these printed a
corresponding tint upon the paper which took off the film thus laid. The pigment
might be of any colour desired, or might only represent a lighter tint of the ink that
had been used all along for the lines. Hence either an effect of colour or one merely
of gradations of light and shade could equally well be produced by the process