Vasari on Technique | Project Gutenberg

139. These fanciful conceits have a significance for the history of ornament which they hardly seem to deserve. Artificial grottoes of the kind Vasari describes were very popular in the France of the eighteenth century, and pleased the taste of the sophisticated society of the time with an artificial ‘nature,’ that corresponded to the affected pastoral style in literature. From the shell and stalactite decoration of these grottoes was evolved the ornamental style characteristic of the age of Louis XV, the shell-like forms of which betray its origin. The name commonly given to this ornament, that consists in little but a graceful play of curved forms, is ‘rococo,’ and this word is connected with ‘rocaille,’ a regular French term for fantastic grotto-work of the kind here under notice.

140. The well-known ‘Villa Madama.’

141. One of the best existing examples of these ‘rustic’ grottoes and fountains is that constructed by Buontalenti in the Boboli Gardens near the eastern entrance. As part of its decoration there are built in four marble figures, supposed to have been sketched out by Michelangelo for the tomb of Julius. A view of the interior of this grotto is given on Plate IV. The statue in the corner is one of the four noticed above, while a little above it and to the left is one of the grotesque figures incrusted with odds and ends, which Vasari praises as so fascinating.

142. The ultimate derivation of the word ‘mosaic’ is a difficult problem. Its immediate parent is the late-Latin ‘musivum’ which is generally connected with the Greek μουσεῖον, meaning a ‘place of the Muses.’ With this significance, the Greek word in its Latinized form ‘museum’ is suitably applied to collections of works of art and similar objects of aesthetic interest and value. A ‘place of the Muses’ may however be of a different kind. The Muses, like other nymphs, were worshipped in grottoes as guardian genii of fountains, and Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 21, writes of ‘erosa saxa in aedificiis, quae musaea vocant, dependentia ad imaginem specus arte reddendam,’ where the suggestion is of a rustic grotto like that in the Boboli Gardens. Such grottoes, natural or artificial, might fittingly be decked with shells and coloured stones and any bright inlay that offered itself. If incrustations of the kind we call mosaic were actually met with in these haunts of the Muses, the work might readily be called by a name suggestive of these same nymphs, and this might be applied later on to tesselated work in general. There is however no proof, either in Pliny or elsewhere, that what we call mosaic was actually so used, and it has been questioned by more than one authority whether there is really any connection between the word ‘mosaic,’ in its various forms, and the Muses. An oriental derivation has even been suggested for the term.

Dr Albert Ilg, in an exceedingly learned paper on the subject in the Wiener Quellenschriften, Neue Folge, V, 158 f., offered an entirely new explanation of the word ‘mosaic,’ which he maintained had in its original sense nothing to do with inlaid work at all, but rather with gilding. He connected it with a root ‘mus’ or ‘mos,’ with a sense of ‘beating’ or ‘grinding,’ and instanced the mediaeval Latin term ‘mosnerium,’ which Ducange notices as equivalent to ‘molendinum,’ ‘mill.’ ‘Musivum opus’ would refer on this view to the gilding process in which the gold is ground to powder or beaten out; and Ilg affirmed ‘Musaicum im alten Sinne kann nur eigentlich Vergoldung, nicht das moderne Mosaik, bezeichnen.’ If the word at first meant ‘gilded work’ it would later on be extended to what we know as ‘mosaic,’ because of the use in mediaeval mosaics of the familiar gold background. The argument of Dr Ilg is not convincing, and the question must be considered still open. Theophilus, for example, Lib. II, c. 12, uses ‘musivum opus’ for inlaid work in which there is no question of gold.

143. Possibly what we call ‘mother of pearl.’

144. See Note on ‘The Sassi, della Valle, and other Collections,’ etc., postea, p. 102 f. The mosaic here noticed is unfortunately lost. Lanciani, The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome, 1906, p. 234, states that he has searched for it in vain.

145. See Note 5, ante, p. 27.

146. Mosaics made up of small cubes of coloured or gilded glass are abundant in early Christian and Byzantine times, but were also used, though sparingly, by the Romans from the time of Augustus downwards. See Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 189, who fixes the time of their introduction.

147. Egg-shell mosaic. See Note, postea, p. 136.

148. See Chapters XV and XVI of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting. The pavement of the cathedral of Siena exhibits a large collection of such mosaics in black and white executed in different technical processes.

149. See Note on ‘Ideal Architecture’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 138.

150. That is, about 4½ inches.

151. About 15½ inches.

152. See note on ‘The Nature of Sculpture,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 179.

153. ‘Working from manner.’ Vasari refers here to what artists call ‘treatment,’ which is a process of analysis and grouping, applied to appearances in nature where the eye sees at first little more than a confused medley of similar forms that are perhaps constantly changing. Under such an aspect the hair as well as the folds of drapery on the human figure presented themselves to the early Greek sculptor, and it was a long time before he learned to handle them aright. In the case of the hair he had no help in previous work, for in Egyptian statues it is often covered, or is replaced by a formal wig, and in Assyrian art the hair is very severely though finely conventionalized. It was not until the age of Pheidias that the Greeks learned how to suggest the soft and ample masses of the hair, and at the same time to subdivide these into the distinct curls or tresses, each one ‘solid,’ as Vasari requires, but individually rendered with the minuter markings which suggest the structure and ‘feel’ of the material. The Italians started of course with this treatment or ‘manner’ already an established tradition founded on antique practice. In the mediaeval sculpture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in France and England the hair is often very artistically rendered.

154. This paragraph opens up a subject of much artistic interest, on which see Note on ‘Sculpture Treated for Position,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 180 f.

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 xiv^me siècle, et tel qu’il s’était continué jusqu’au xvi^me 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 xvi^me 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.