When first scholars began to study the works of the ancients, at that busy period distinguished by the revival of letters and the arts, the discoveries they made were so new and so surprising, that a kind of enchanted mist overspread every object in their eyes, and all they looked back upon was magnified or distorted.

They found so much wisdom and knowledge in the writings of the ancients, that they, as is natural, thought that all antiquity was wise and knowing; and in proportion to their exaggerated esteem for the ancients, they encouraged a contempt for their contemporaries and countrymen, at least as extravagant.

A little consideration would have told them, however, that many things must continue unaltered in nature, though fashion or accident should vary the form in all societies, after the first conveniences, comforts, and luxuries of civilised life have been invented. But here the pride of unusual learning stepped in, and it would have mortified the scholar to think that what he pored over by his midnight lamp in the books of Greece and Rome, could have anything in common with the manners and occupations of his vulgar neighbours. Thus an ignorance founded on prejudice was begotten, and has been maintained in part even to the present day, notwithstanding the stores of common knowledge opened to us by the discovery of Pompeii and its neighbouring towns. Scholars and antiquaries rejoiced indeed at the finding of those towns, because their position, long matter of controversial speculation, was ascertained; but I very much doubt if they did not also feel something like mortification, on beholding open proof that the materials and contrivances of the cooks of these our degenerate days continue like those of the ancients, and that there is no Greek method of eating[214].

Every day is adding something to the conviction of those who required proof, that where the end to be answered is the same, the tools and materials, employed in different ages and countries, cannot choose but be wonderfully alike.

This homely way of considering such matters is not, I know, agreeable to the moderately learned, who think much of small acquirements; but, to real scholars and philosophers, truth is at all times, and under every form, acceptable.

I purpose in this essay to give such an account as I can collect, of the materials used by painters; the substances upon which they painted, the pigments they coloured with, the vehicles by means of which the colours were applied, and the tools employed in painting.

It would appear, from the judiciously conducted researches of some late travellers, that some of the earliest coloured work in Egypt is upon bare sand-stone. Where that rock is of very fine grit the water-colours seem to have answered well, but where the grit was coarse the work became gross and uneven. A remedy was therefore applied; a plaster of very fine lime and some kind of size was spread over the stone, and the colour applied most probably before the plaster was dry, and so approaching to fresco painting, which doubtless grew out of that older manner. The lately opened Etruscan tombs show the same variety; colour upon the bare sand-stone and colour upon thin fine plaister.

The advantage of applying colour upon a damp or even wet ground must have been abundantly apparent, from the success of the painted vases so early brought to perfection in Greece and Tuscany; and accordingly, in the earliest pictures of any magnitude described as painted in either country, we recognise genuine fresco painting[215].

But walls were not always at hand for the painter; and many were eager to have pictures which they might transport to other countries than those of the painter, either for the religious purposes of decorating temples and fulfilling vows, or purely for the pleasure of possessing works of art, or, finally, for the purposes of trade.

A substitute easily occurred. Wooden panels, well seasoned, and smeared over with plaster, smoothed either with pumice, or some substance answering the same purpose, were found to answer admirably. Yet even here it would seem that the Egyptians led the way; for in order to prepare the coffins of their mummies for their painted decorations, they were in like manner prepared with a fine plaster of lime or chalk, exceedingly thin[216].

The mummy cases were made of various woods; among others the Egyptian fig, which is often translated sycamore[217]. From Pliny’s description[218] it is not certain which of the known figs was the Egyptian sycamore. The grain is light, close, and tough, and the timber is best seasoned in water.

The wood usually employed for panels for large pictures was the heart of the female larch. Pliny says, that painters have found by experiment that it is smooth and clean, and not apt to split or warp; he adds that it will last for ever[219]. Theophrastus speaks of the same wood for the same purposes, and also of the cornel[220]. The cedar and cypress appear also to have been used. For smaller pictures it is probable that a greater variety of trees furnished tables for the painter. The tablets used in the schools at Sicyon are said to have been of box-wood. Holly was also particularly fitted for the purpose, by the closeness of its grain and its durability. The earliest modern Italians used also the wood of the fig tree well dried and seasoned[221], besides the larch, ilex, sycamore, and walnut tree.

The ancients prepared their boards or tablets with a thin ground of chalk and size of some kind[222], whether a size of flour paste, or weak carpenter’s glue, does not appear. In the thirteenth century the painters took the trouble to make the white for laying grounds themselves. Cennino’s directions on the subject are curious on more accounts than one. He says, “Take the pinion bones and ribs of chickens, the staler the better, and, just as you find them under the table[223], put them into the fire till they become whiter than the ashes themselves.” After this he gives directions to pound, wash and dry them thoroughly, and to keep them in a dry paper for use; he allows certain bones of the sheep also to be used, but, as he always insists on staleness, I suppose he wishes them to be free from grease[224]. Cennino’s boards were prepared with great care, washed with many waters, and pumiced to perfect smoothness; the ground to be laid on thin and rendered smooth and even with the hand, or, as he says, the fat part of the thumb.

So far the boards for the school of Sicyon and those for the school of Giotto appear to have been much alike. The next step seems to me also the same. The pupils were to draw very lightly with a metal point—Fuseli calls the antique one a cestrum—upon the white ground, and if anything was amiss it was easily effaced. Cennino directs that the tool should be tipped with silver, whatever metal the main part might be made of, that it should be moderately sharp, and very smooth[225].

We have not any direct evidence that linen cloth or canvass was used to paint upon before the reign of Nero, who ordered an immense portrait of himself to be painted on a linen cloth one hundred and twenty feet in height. Pliny, who relates the fact, does not say whether it were stretched on a frame, or whether it covered planks, to prevent, in some degree, the warping and splitting, to which so many joinings as would have been necessary in a table of that size must have rendered them liable.

Several writers, and particularly Monsieur Durand[226], have imagined that Pliny says, painting on linen had never till then been heard of. I think, however, that it is the colossal size of the picture that had not been heard of because we find that, at that very time, it was no uncommon thing to decorate the places for the exhibition of prize-fighters with hangings, on which were pictures of remarkable fights; these, Pliny expressly says, were painted cloths[227], and, were it of consequence, I think passages might be collected to show the great probability that linen cloth was used by painters where works of little durability were required. The preparation with chalk and size must have been the same as that for painting on panel.

The use of linen books, for the registering private affairs is mentioned as common, before paper made of the papyrus came into general use[229]. Fronto saw many books of linen preserved in the ancient archives of Anagni[230]. And even after the papyrus and parchment came into use, Pliny mentions that several Eastern nations still made their letters on woven cloth.

We are told that both Parrhasius and Zeuxis were in the habit of making drawings on parchment[231]. We know also that Greek herbalists drew and coloured the plants they wrote of in books. It is therefore improbable that they should have overlooked the light, pliable, yet tough material, linen cloth. It might seem less lasting than panel; but for small subjects it was surely preferable either to paper or parchment, and as the use of it was not unknown for writing upon, why should we suppose painters so long neglected it?

The Mexicans, though certainly acquainted with the use of painting on wood, used also the prepared skin of a small deer, and the paper made from the Agave Americana; but they preferred cotton cloth, which they prepared with a white shining earth, as they did their paper and parchment, and as the Egyptians prepared their coffins, and the Greek planters their tablets.

Vasari, whose carelessness is so notorious that nobody now thinks of depending on anything he says, beyond what it is certain he could have seen, attributes to Margaritone, about A.D. 1270, the first use of fine linen cloth, which he says he pasted over his panels to prevent cracks and rents. But there are many examples of Italian pictures before Margaritone, where the panel is covered with linen, whether for the purpose above mentioned, or for the sake of securing a more equal ground, is of no importance. It is enough if we find the practice established among those most likely to have inherited at least the mechanical part of ancient painting. Cennino gives particular directions for laying down cloth upon panel, and he professes to teach the practice of Giotto. But Giotto’s first works go back to the thirteenth century[232], and he adopted the practice of his master, Cimabue, and learned whatever his friend Gaddo Gaddi could teach him of the methods of the Greek painters, in company with whom Gaddo had been employed in decorating Saint Mark’s, in Venice, and Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome; and we may hence conclude that Margaritone only did what older painters had done before.

Indeed from his personal character it is unlikely that he should have set the example of a new practice, for he is said to have been weary of life on account of the new fashions in art that were obtaining towards the end of his career, and to have envied the younger painters for their success[233].

As the ancient painting on marble appears to have been merely for the sake of capricious additions to the beautiful variegated veins of nature, it is not worth naming.

With regard to the pigments used by the ancients, the greater number are employed still. All the ochres, the vermilion, white lead, lamp-black, and so on, appear to have been prepared and applied either in fresco or distemper, as they are now. With regard to the colours for pictures on panel also, there appears to be only the difference that modern improvements in chemistry have introduced.

It may not be without interest to compare Pliny’s account of colouring substances in the first century with that of Cennino in the fourteenth, and these with the list of pigments now employed. It will be more difficult to collect information as to the vehicles used in painting; but I do not despair of suggesting to the consideration of the antiquarian artist a few points which may lead to farther knowledge.

But, before I proceed, I must notice the common belief, founded, it is true, upon an expression of Pliny’s, that the ancient painters, even Apelles himself, used but four colours, and that these were white and black; and red and yellow ochres.

The absurdity of the thing ought of itself to have awakened the spirit of criticism, apt enough sometimes to detect errors. But this was so marvellous a thing, and raised the ancients so far above all contemporaries in skill, that the seduction to moderns was irresistible, so one after another, scholars and critics, have repeated the four-coloured passage, without regard to the context, without comparing one assertion of the author with another.

If the whole passage where the famous sentence is found be read, it will appear that Pliny is declaiming after his accustomed manner against the luxury of the Romans, of his time, and particularly their indulgence in fine colours, their very walls, and ships, and funeral cars being coloured, as he says, with blue and scarlet of the most costly kind; while the ancient painters produced their fine works with only four colours, naming the commonest and coarsest he can recollect for the sake of contrast; and produces as witnesses, the works of the painters, Apelles, Echion, Melanthus, and Nichomachus.

Now, whoever will take the trouble to read a little farther, will find that Pliny exclaims with as much bitterness against the use of large earthen dishes as against the luxury of colour; and brings examples equally forcible to prove that it was wise and virtuous to love little cups.

And, again, if the nineteenth book be referred to, what pathetic complaints of the decline of cabbage eating will be found, and how monstrous he thought it that a man should buy a fish or a fowl at market when his forefathers fed upon salad! Then the enormity committed by Apicius in teaching young Drusus not to like cabbage sprouts so well as broccoli, and the reprimand of Tiberius addressed to the youth on the occasion, are good specimens of Pliny’s love for the “wisdom of his ancestors,” and his little consideration for the great benefits he himself enjoyed from more modern improvements. Then he laments that asses may eat thistles while the common people of Rome are debarred from cardoons and artichokes; and I verily believe, that were his respect for Cato not in the way, we should have had a philippic against those who presumed to eat asparagus larger than wheat-straw; but Cato, it seems, was among the first who had asparagus beds near Rome; so with one growl at such as devoured the monstrous plants from Ravenna, he allows that cultivated asparagus may be eaten.

But Pliny himself contradicts the story of the four colours. In the instance of Apelles, how could the Venus Anadyomene, she who was rising from the green or azure ocean, under a bright blue sky, have been painted with lamp-black, white chalk, ruddle, and yellow ochre only? Then Apelles lived after Zeuxis; and if Zeuxis painted grapes, whence got he the green and purple, if none but the four chaste, grave, and solemn colours were known? What becomes of the monochromes, which Pliny himself says preceded by far the time of Apelles, yet they were painted, according to him, with dragon’s blood, a pigment by no means resembling any of the four orthodox colours?

But such instances occur at every page. I will point out one more, in which we have other authority for contradicting him besides his own. He tells us that Micon painted the temple of Theseus. Pausanias and others say the same. Now Micon was contemporary with Polygnotus, consequently, at least 150 years before Apelles’ time. Some of his pictures were painted flat on stucco within the temple; the rest were coloured bas-reliefs. But the stucco, though the traces of pictures and subjects are gone, retains the marks, or rather stains of the colours—so does the sculpture; and among those colours we find vestiges of bronze and gold-coloured arms, of a blue sky, and of blue, green, and red drapery[234].

In the catacombs of Egypt, in times long anterior to the great painters of Greece, blues and greens are as commonly found as yellows and reds. In the ancient sepulchres of Etruria, blue and green are employed along with other colours, and sometimes capriciously enough, for there is a very conspicuous blue horse in one of the chambers.

But we have an authority far above these. Moses expressly mentions the colours, scarlet, red, blue, and purple, when he describes the furniture of the ark of the covenant, and the vestments of the priests.

With these facts before them, it appears incomprehensible that a single hasty expression of an author, however respectable, should have been dwelt upon and adopted almost as an article of faith by painters and critics in Italy, France, and England.

If, instead of the expressions of Pliny, writers upon colours had adopted the words Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates about midway between the times of Polygnotus and Apelles, we should have had the orthodox number of colours increased to twelve.

In the Phædo, in that last beautiful fable which Socrates relates to comfort his friends, just before he bathes and prepares to drink the poison, he tells of a world inhabited by the immortals, to whom the guidance of human affairs is given, as well as of a world prepared for the spirits of good men; and says, this superior “world, if surveyed from on high, appears like a globe covered with twelve skins, various and distinguished with colours, a pattern of which are the colours found among us, and which our painters use[235].”

But there would have been nothing marvellous, nothing out of the reach of other men, in admitting that the greatest painters of antiquity were provided with a good palette of colours. It was more agreeable to make them execute extraordinary works with inadequate means, and so keep them as a race apart, and far excelling what these degenerate days can produce.

It would not have been worth while to notice Pliny’s splenetic sentence on the four colours, had it not been rendered important by the use, or rather abuse, of it in modern times, and I could not let it pass unnoticed and uncontradicted, when so many proofs of its want of foundation were to be found
in his own book, and in numberless facts connected with the most ancient works of art in existence.

I will now proceed to give such an account as I have been able to glean from writers in different ages, of the pigments either formerly or now in use.

Of the white colouring matters, that most used by modern painters could not have been of great value to the ancients, unless they had some oils, or vehicles equivalent, wherewith to apply it; for it turns black when used in water or fresco painting. I mean ceruse, or white lead[236]. Pliny speaks of that from Spain as the best for painters; and he also names calcined ceruse, the use of which was discovered by the accident of a ship taking fire in the port of Piræus, when the ceruse in pots which was on board was consequently calcined. It is remarkable that these pots of ceruse had been brought from Spain for the use of the Greek ladies, who painted their faces with it.

Cennino praises the same white highly; but warns fresco painters against it[237]; and our modern artists use it to temper most of their colours in oil.

Next to the ceruse, the ancients valued as white a natural earth from Egypt, Crete, and Cyrene, which Pliny tells us is said to be hardened sea foam mixed with mud, and that accordingly minute shells were found in it. This should be the meerschaum, so valued for the bolls of tobacco-pipes in Germany, but the meerschaum has no shells. He calls it Parætonum, and says it made the best and finest wash for walls and fine stucco. There was also a very fine white pigment, made of chalk, ground with the white glass of which rings and other ornaments were made; it was therefore called annulare.

Next to this, as a natural earth, that called Eretria, both raw and calcined, was valued; and then Melinum, from the isle of Melos; which last was, however, often too unctuous for painters’ use, in which case it suited the fullers better.

Giotto’s white was called Bianco di San Giovanni, and seems to have been composed of the finest lime, repeatedly washed and beaten to purify it, and then made into small cakes, and dried in the sun. The natural white earths were also used, especially in fresco painting.

In modern practice many white earths and some preparations of shells are used. Besides these, and white lead, there are also preparations of zinc, tin, and barytes, which are available in different departments of art.

Of yellows, it was impossible for any one seeking to miss them, as they abound in most countries; and those of the most durable and best kinds, namely the ochres.

The Attic and Gallic sils or ochres were pale, and were used for lights by Polygnotus and Micon; but there were many ochres found in Campania and in the hills not far from Rome, which were used both raw and burnt. The burning of ochres generally renders the colours more transparent and darker, so that some of the ochres assume a reddish hue, especially the Sienna earth. Common yellow ochre, when burnt, is the colour called light-red, admirable for flesh tints; and so indeed are many of the other red ochres, whether natural, or artificially coloured by fire.

The ancients used the ochres of Scyros and Lydia for shadows. The dark earths from those countries resemble that called umber, produced in Umbria, the use of which might be unknown to the Greeks[238].

These different ochres continue even now to be used, and to them are added varieties of modern discovery, produced in England, Spain, and other countries.

Orpiment, or the sulphuretted oxide of arsenic, was known as a pigment to the ancients. Its hue, approaching to gold, induced Caligula to attempt to extract gold from it; and it is said that he succeeded in procuring a small quantity from some brought from Syria. We are ignorant how the ancient painters applied it. Cennino says, it is neither good nor lasting in fresco or distemper; but that with glue or size, it may be used in other pictures. It is still used by painters, but is an uncertain colour[239].

The most brilliant and most valued red was vermilion. I suppose also that it was one of the most ancient pigments. Homer says, in the catalogue of the ships, the twelve galleys of Ulysses were painted with it[240]; and I suspect that there was some mystical sacredness attached to it, because it was the custom in Rome, that the first act of a Censor on entering into office, was to rouge Jupiter’s face with vermilion[241]. They painted all the gods’ faces with it. Horace flatters Augustus by making him received among the gods, and drinking nectar between Hercules and Pollux, with a vermilion face. At Athens, cords stained with powdered vermilion were employed to drive the people to the public meetings. The dramatic poets introduced this custom frequently on the scene; and it would appear that the hindmost had the worst, those who were caught with their robes stained by the cords, were fined for non-attendance at their public duties. This same vermilion was certainly early used by painters, and was much improved, as Theophrastus says[242], by Callias, an Athenian, who calcined it, and brought it to its very fine colour. In its rough state it is known as cinnabar; and hence, both in ancient and modern times, it has been taken for other mineral reds; and, what is worse, often adulterated with them. In its pure state, it is a lasting colour. Cennino calls it cinabro. His cinabrese is a red used for flesh when mixed with white in fresco works; it is made from sinopia, or red bole or ochre, native in Cappadocia, and of the Bianco San Giovanni[243].

Minium, or red lead[244], seems to have been confounded by the writers on colours with native cinnabar; though the painter would soon have reason to regret using minium for vermilion, as minium blackens on exposure to light and air, unless secured by strong varnishes or coats of wax.

Of the red earths or ochres Pliny places the sinopia, of which I have already spoken, first. It is now sold in the shops as Armenian bole, and is used in some manufactures. Mattioli, quoting from Dioscorides, says, that the best was considered to be that of a deep liver colour, smooth, and heavy. Akin to this is the common ruddle or red earth, used by the ancients as well as the moderns, in the process of gilding; and, being properly ground and washed, useful in most kinds of painting, but especially fresco.

Dragon’s-blood was known to the ancients as a pigment; but, from Pliny’s account of it, they were clearly ignorant of its nature. Cennino names it but with contempt, and it is not much valued by the moderns[245].

With the ancients, who do not appear to have known any of the lakes, it was different; they valued it much, and, it is said, used it for their monochrome pictures[246]. If they did so, it confirms Fuseli’s account of the process of painting, or rather of drawing, those pictures. It is a resin of a warm semi-transparent, dullish red colour; and is best used as a varnish which darkens on exposure to the air. If this varnish were laid over the white ground of the monochromes, after the first process of drawing with the point, the outline would be seen through, and the indentation made by the point upon the tender chalk ground being filled up with the varnish, would present a dark outline, the point being then applied, would cut down to the white ground, and so produce the light reliefs[247].

The other reds known to the ancients appear to have been mostly opaque.

Cennino mentions Lac or Lake. But it appears that in his days it was principally procured by discharging the colour from shreds of scarlet and purple cloths. His editor imagines that he also knew and recommended gum lac. Be that as it may, neither the ancients nor the school of Giotto seem to have known anything of the fine lakes; whether prepared from the Indian gums, from madder, or from other substances, that enrich the palette of painters, both in oil and water-colours now. Sir Humphrey Davy, however, seems to think that lake made from madder may have been known to the ancients[248].

Of blue colouring substances, the most beautiful known to the ancients, as to us, was ultramarine. Pliny says the best of azures came from Egypt, the second kind from Scythia, and a third from Cyprus. It is not possible to determine accurately whether all these were true ultramarine, for it appears that then, as now, it was often adulterated, and even imitated, by boiling native blue earths with woad, or by grinding smalt with it. That manufactured in Spain, and at Puteoli, was entirely artificial[249].

It is said, on the authority of Theophrastus, that one of the kings of Egypt invented the method of making the beautiful Armenian blue, so precious that kings sent presents of it to each other. And this corresponds with the value of ultramarine at all times. The Lapis Lazuli, from which the colour is made, is found in Siberia, and on the borders of Persia, as well as in China, where the preparation of the colour has long been known. It is probable that the superiority of the colour brought from Egypt was owing to the method of preparing it, for the most genuine kinds were certainly likely to be those of Scythia and Armenia[250].

Of that brought from Scythia there were four preparations of different degrees of beauty and intensity of colour; and shortly before Pliny wrote, one Nestor had invented a new preparation from the lightest part of the Egyptian blue.

The earliest Christian painters appropriated it to painting the robes of the Virgin Mary, and called it after her name, and it is much more probable that those artists inherited the mode of preparing it, than that it was invented in the still rude times in which the arts began to revive. I saw in the middle church of the sacred convent at Assisi, a large jar which had been sent to the painters, Cimabue, Giotto, and their pupils, full of ultramarine by the Queen of Cyprus[251], for the purpose of painting that magnificent church.

Some of the ancient imitations were, as I have said, composed of earth boiled with woad, those of Cennino’s time were boiled with indigo instead of woad.

The blue earths from Germany appear to have been long known, indeed the cobalt, though that name had not then been given to it, was necessary for colouring the glasses and pastes used for fictitious gems by the ancient artists[252].

Indigo had been introduced into the west from India not long before Pliny’s time. Painters had, however, immediately adopted it for shadows and for strong lines.

The green colours were procured in great part by the ancients as they were in the middle ages, and are now, by the mixture of blues with yellows. There were, however, several green earths in use, and many oxides of copper, sometimes used in a fluid, sometimes in a solid state. The principal green earth used by the ancients was chrysocolla, or borax. Macedonia, Armenia, and Spain, furnished the best raw material; but the best manufactory appears to have been in Cyprus. One kind of it, by boiling with dyers’ weed, assumed a golden yellow hue, and was then called orobites. The best method of using it was, to lay first a ground of the white earth, parætonum, then to wash that over with vitriol, and so lay on the chrysocolla, which is very brilliant, over that ground. The green made from orobites mixed with azure is not durable, though bright[253].

The borax is, doubtless, the terra verde of Cennino, the terre verte of the moderns; the best is now procured from Holland, where the art of preparing it is understood. For some ages this art was in the hands of the Venetians, who imported the borax from India, Persia, and China, where it is produced at the bottom of some lakes. It is also found in similar situations in Tuscany[254].

But verdigris, variously prepared, was used both by painters and the manufacturers of glass for ornamental purposes, as well as by surgeons and physicians for potions and plasters among the ancients. In Giotto’s time, it entered into the composition of many tints, several of which, however, faded easily. With the moderns it is not much used, as being apt to disagree with some other pigments, and difficult of application.

It was an ingredient in the painter’s black, called atramentum[255]. However, most of the blacks used were of the soot collected from burning various substances, such as resin, or pitch, very little different from common lamp-black, which, mixed with copperas, was mostly used for writing ink.

Polygnotus and Mycon made their black of the refuse of the wine-press, burnt. Apelles used burnt ivory. Of the Indian black[256] the nature or manufacture was unknown to Pliny, as it is to us. An excellent black was procured both from the soot and ashes of torch-wood, the soot adhering to the dyers’ coppers was also sought after, and some painters imagined that the ashes from a funeral pile were preferable to all. This is properly treated by Pliny as mere superstition.

When any of these blacks were used as ink, gum of some kind was added. For painting on walls size was the necessary vehicle. But vinegar was in all cases found to be the best ingredient to mix the colour properly.

Dioscorides says that the soot from glass furnaces was used for ink.

To these blacks, Cennino adds the burnt stones of peaches, and shells of almonds, or burnt vine twigs. They were to be mixed with various vehicles according to the work required. In India a fine black is made from burnt cocoa-nut shells.

There was a colour very much used by the ancients for glazing. It was roset, or purple-red, procured by throwing Tripoli stone into the vats where fine purple dyes were boiling[257]. To make a fine red in painting, the ground was laid with sandyx[258], and then glazed with roset mixed with white of egg. When a fine purple was required the ground was laid with blue, over which the roset was applied with the same vehicle. The roset of Puteoli was reckoned the best, though finer dyes were produced by the Tyrians, Getulians, and Lacedemonians.

The colour mentioned by Cennino most akin to this, is his ametisto, which he describes as a native mineral colour.

Armenino talks of a pavonazzo still more like it in its properties.

We have a purple mineral, found in the Forest of Deane, but in general our purples and purple browns are now produced from madder, or from metallic oxides.

Such is the scanty information I am able to give concerning the ancient pigments, with any degree of certainty. Various earths were brought into the market from Germany and Gaul; and it is improbable that the Cologne, and other rich brown earths, should have been neglected. Cyprus appears to have furnished the painters’ shops with the greatest number and variety, both of native and manufactured colours, and no doubt the Venetians succeeded to her knowledge and skill in this matter, as they did to her commerce and maritime power[259].

I have spoken with more confidence on the subjects of most of the antique colours than I should otherwise have done, from having a clear recollection of a conversation I had with Sir Humphrey Davy, just after he had been engaged in examining several jars of antique pigments that had been discovered on an estate belonging to the Archbishop of Tarentum[260]. He told me that not one of those he had examined differed in substance from those now used for the same purposes.

It will be very difficult indeed to point out with tolerable probability the vehicles used for painting by the ancient painters; certainty, excepting to a very limited extent, is impossible. Time, which has in some instances spared colours so as to permit a satisfactory examination into their nature, has uniformly dried up the substances of the vehicles with which they were laid on; so that it is only where such things are actually named by ancient authors, and that is very sparingly, that we can feel any confidence as to the matter[261].

There is, however, a source of probable conjecture which ought not to be neglected. The use of oils, resins and gums in medicine has been recorded; and the mixtures of those incidentally named, are so nearly what we find used among the earliest painters, of whose works we have any technical account, that it is scarcely possible to believe that they were overlooked by the ancients.

For the early pictures on walls, whether the ground were of stone or stucco, lime-water was doubtless found to be a sufficient binder. But to adorn the mummy coffins something more than water must have been required. The Egyptians had the advantage of several native gum-bearing trees. The Acacia Nilotica, which produces the Gum Arabic; the Sarcocolla[262], the gum of which Pliny expressly says is used by painters as well as physicians; and the tree or shrub producing the Gum Senegal; the Terebinth, yielding the manna thuris, Gum Ammoniac[263] and Sandarach[264], were likewise all to be found on the borders of Egypt; and some of these, we know from Herodotus, were employed in embalming, and therefore very probably as vehicles for the colours with which they honoured and ornamented the dead.

The desire of showing respect to the remains of those we have once loved is a blessed principle of our nature. It is at once the cause and the effect of that tender care of human life which becomes one of the first principles of civilisation. It is respect and duty, bestowed where no selfishness can ever expect a return, and by the very occupation it forces upon us, breaks the first overwhelming violence of grief, when the day of death, of which no preparation ever took away the bitterness, arrives, and allows us time and occasion to exert that moral resolution necessary to a due submission to the will of HIM, who knoweth best when to give and when to take away.

The solemn death-rites of the Egyptians were practised by priests and physicians, aided by professional embalmers; and their daily practice must have led to a knowledge of many physiological facts advantageous to the science of medicine. The search after substances calculated to preserve the body could not fail to lead to chemical discoveries of equal value to the arts. The country itself furnished some of these substances, but Arabia and the neighbouring nations still more.

Among these, the asphaltum, pissasphaltum, and petroleum, brought from the Dead Sea, from Babylon, and from the province of Mazenderan, appear to have been most generally used; and it is a curious fact, that a substance arising from the partial decomposition of the bodies, mixed with these mineral substances, should, very early under the name of mummy, have been employed by Arabian and Jewish physicians in medicine. It is still stranger that it should have kept its place in the materia medica of most nations till very lately, and I question whether it be yet entirely expunged from them.

As a colouring matter, the same mummy was highly esteemed, and is still often used. But it is giving way to other preparations of asphaltum with wax, oil, or some equivalent substance. The prejudice which led to the seeking among the costly embalmed bodies of Egypt a remedy for disease, is akin to that which is not yet quite exploded even in England, and which leads the vulgar to pass the hand of a hanged man over scrophulous swellings as a certain cure. From this strange superstition even Boyle was not so free, but that, in giving a recipe for some preparation, he mentions the calcined arm bone of a hanged man reduced to powder as an ingredient! This same prejudice, or something like it, led the painters of antiquity to rake, as Pliny says, among the ashes of a funeral pile for a superior black pigment, and induced more modern artists to use mummy brown.

The common bitumen or asphaltum, was known by the early physicians to mix readily with oil, and was much used as an external application; very ancient artists also varnished their statues of wood or metal with that mixture, to preserve them from the action of the air[265].

But there was a finer substance, called by Pliny an earth, ampelitis, which being softened in oil worked like wax. Besides the use of the ampelitis for plasters, the antique men of the world used it to blacken their eyebrows and colour their hair[266].

With these uses of asphaltum and ampelitis, softened or dissolved in oil, the antique painters must have been familiar, and it is difficult to imagine that they did not avail themselves of so agreeable a colour and varnish. It answers, in a great degree, to the account given of the dark fluid with which Apelles varnished his pictures. It would certainly preserve them from the effects of dust and wet; it would make the colours richer, and, at the same time, soften the harshness of the more glaring ones.

Pliny enumerates many resins which were to be dissolved in oil before they could be used as liniments. They are such as flow from the terebinth, larch, lentisk or mastic, and cypress; besides the pine or pitch trees. He also names many gums which might be dissolved in water, or wine, or vinegar, or a mixture of vinegar and wax. Some of these gums he occasionally names as useful to painters; and it is not unreasonable to conclude, that those preparations of them with oil, which would render them so peculiarly convenient as vehicles for colour, or varnishes for preserving pictures, were not overlooked.

Such must have been the varnish employed by the Egyptian painters; the brilliant appearance of which is mentioned in Mr. Clift’s letter, printed at the end of the first Essay.

There is the authority of Vitruvius for the ancient use of oil in painting doors and other wood-work exposed to the weather.

With regard to ships, it appears that their colours—and we know from Homer that they were painted in very ancient times—could not have been laid on with water. I am ignorant how far petroleum, which was known to Herodotus, was calculated to resist weather, or whether any of the resins or juices from the various kinds of fir and pine might, by being mixed with it, render it fit for the purpose.

Pliny mentions the substance scraped off the bottoms of ships, as a mixture of pitch and wax, of which a plaster of great efficacy for some kinds of sores was made. It is clear, therefore, that pitch and wax were both used to defend the bottoms and seams of the ships from the effects of the water, and, probably, also to render them smoother, and so to offer less resistance to the waves.

But the vermilion-prowed ships must have been painted, and very probably in the encaustic manner; that is, by laying on the colour or the wax to defend it, hot; this would answer the double purpose of shielding the colour, and sending the wax or pitch farther into the substance of the wood, which would thus be better preserved. Indeed, until the general adoption of oil as a vehicle for colour, nothing but the encaustic process could have preserved the figure-heads and the designs on the sterns of the ancient ships during the shortest voyage[267].

It is a pity that Pliny has not left us a more minute account of the process of encaustic painting; but it appears to have been so commonly known and practised in his time, that he has not considered it worth while to describe it particularly.

He mentions the doubtfulness of its origin and of its inventor, but speaks of most of the beautiful works of Pausias as having been executed in that manner. In a subsequent passage, writing of vermilion and minium, and of the great luxury at which the Romans of his time had arrived in fine colours, he mentions that walls coloured with those expensive pigments were apt to blacken unless defended by a varnish of wax, for which he gives the following recipe:—

“Take white Punic wax, melt it with oil, and while it is hot wash the painting over with pencils, or fine brushes of bristles, dipped in the same varnish. When laid on it must be well rubbed, and heated again with red-hot coals of gall-nuts, held close to it, till the wall may sweat and fry again, then rub it well with waxed cloths, and then with clean linen cloths[268].”

This, I believe, is the longest and clearest account we have of this method of painting or rather varnishing. But there is another passage in the same author, from which it would appear that colours were made up with wax for use. For that case the above varnish would be most appropriate, and without the inconveniences of such varnishes as are composed of matters which do not correspond with the nature of the colours and vehicles they cover. The passage is as follows: “If one be disposed to make black wax, let him put thereto—i. e. to bleached Punic wax—ashes of paper, like as with an addition of orchanet, it will be red. Moreover, wax may be brought to all manner of colours for painters, limners, and enamellers, and such curious artificers, to represent the form and similitude of anything they list. And for a thousand other purposes men have used thereof, but principally to preserve their walls and armours withal[269].”

We know, then, that the ancients used water, white of egg, solutions of various gums, vinegar and wax, with or without oil. We may infer also that they used solutions of resinous substances in oil, asphaltum, and petroleum, because they were well acquainted with preparations of these, and their application to a variety of purposes. But it would be rash as useless to assert that they painted with this or that material, having no positive information on the subject, and no examples of antique pictures, which can do more than indicate the nature of their works in fresco or distemper.

Mr. Raspe, in his ingenious essay on oil painting, as known to the ancients, has laboured to prove too much, and has therefore not received all the credit he deserves[270]; but his printing the text of the monk Theophilus, and of part of Heraclius on the arts of the Romans, deserves our gratitude[271].

Both these authors direct, that colours for painting doors, and for preparing panel for pictures, should be ground in linseed oil; and they observe, that all kinds of colours bear grinding in oil. But all cannot be ground with gum, and therefore white and red lead and carmine must be ground with white of egg, where oil is not used. When a transparent painting was required over a ground of oil, then colour mixed with linseed oil was absolutely necessary[272].

The next period at which we know from a contemporary writer what vehicles were used, is the end of the fourteenth century, or the beginning of the fifteenth, when Cennino wrote; but he professes to give the exact process of Giotto, a century earlier, being himself very old when he composed his work, and having been the apprentice of Taddeo Gaddi, the immediate pupil, assistant, and, in some particulars, the rival, of Giotto.

The usual vehicle or tempora appears to have been the whole egg beat up with a gill of pure water to each egg, and mixed with the milky juice of the fig-tree, where it was procurable.

Several colours, however, could not be used with this ordinary vehicle, because of the yellow colour of the yolk, which turned the blues green, and injured some other pigments. In that case, the white of egg clarified was used, or fine size made of the clippings of parchment, or even flour paste well, but not too much, boiled. A vehicle of the yolk of egg alone, for such colours as were not injured by the yellow, was found to answer equally well in fresco, in distemper, and on panel.

Though Cennino knew, and perhaps occasionally practised painting in oil, it is evident that the oil was used by him and his masters chiefly as a varnish. He directs it to be prepared nearly according to the recipe of the monk Theophilus; the difference being, that the oil is to be simmered till one half is evaporated, and the pure resin is to be added, in the proportion of an ounce to every pound of the raw linseed oil.

Armenino, in A. D. 1600, repeats nearly all Cennino says of vehicles; he adds several compositions, one of which only I shall notice, because he tells us that he had heard from the scholars of Corregio, that it was used by that great man. A varnish composed of the purest turpentine[273], made hot, to which was added an equal measure of petroleum, was spread over the picture, previously warmed in the sun or otherwise. This is said to have been thin, lucid, and durable.

As to modern vehicles, there is no new oil discovered by chemists that has not been tried, nor any combinations of gums and resins, with oils, whether fixed or essential. The desire of quickly drying substances has also produced a variety of vehicles and varnishes, all of which, in particular cases, and for certain purposes, seem to have answered. But their use has disappointed the artist in others. Perhaps so great a variety by tempting to injudicious mixtures, may have caused the partial failure.

This is a question, however, for practical artists; my business is only to relate historically what has been done, not to comment on what is actually doing, or should be done.

And now we must inquire what tools were used by antique artists. Here again Mr. Wilkinson is our best informant. In the unfinished pictures in some of the catacombs, he saw traces of the use of charcoal points, and also of red outlines, corresponding not only with the practice recommended by Cennino, but with what I saw in the Campo Santo at Pisa, where, the upper stucco having fallen off, upon which the pictures themselves had been painted while wet, a line drawn in red earth, like the bole of Sinope, appeared upon the coarser ground, and had evidently been corrected preparatory to laying the true ground and colour. The metal points used for drawing by the early Greeks, were most likely used also by the Egyptians, where required; but the paintings we are best acquainted with, namely, those on the mummy cases, are outlined, if not with a pen or reed, with a fine pencil.

In the curious collection of Egyptian furniture, tools, &c., brought together by Mr. Sams, there were some palettes; they were oblong, and had a sort of case at one end for the pencils and brushes, and at the other a handle. The plates in Rossellini’s Egypt show the manner in which these were used.

D’Agincourt gives some tracings from an illuminated MS. Dioscorides, in the library at Vienna, in two of which we find an artist’s study; in one, a paintress is at work upon a picture sketched upon a moveable frame, not unlike those used for needle-work; her colours appear to be in a box, as water colours would be, and she has a small palette held in the palm of her left hand.

The other is a painter employed in drawing a plant; his easel is three-legged, his paper is pinned or tacked to a widish board, his palette is like that of the paintress, and his colour box the same; the pencils seem as fine as pens in both.

Cennino directs that pencils shall be made either of the tails of grey squirrels, called Vair[274], answering to sable, or of hogs’ bristles. He points out with minuteness how to select the longest hairs of the vair, and how many tails must contribute the longest, in order to make a good pencil; what is more, he mentions that these soft brushes were to be used of all sizes, from those which were drawn into the hollow of a pigeon’s feather, to those requiring a vulture’s quill. As to the bristle tools, they appear to be exactly what we now use; and the art of making which appears to be one of those handed down from the Greeks and Romans, without any change worth notice.

I have thus endeavoured to bring together what is to be known historically of the mechanical part of painting. Dry and wet plaster, that is, distemper and fresco, have been employed in all countries, from Egypt to Mexico, for grounds. Pannel, prepared with a thin coat of chalk or plaster and size, has been the next general material. The painted inner mummy cases, where the linen was prepared with plaster, are the earliest pictures on linen, so far as we can judge. The linen painted hangings for prize fighters, and Nero’s famous canvas, show that the practice of painting pictures on linen was not unknown to the ancients; but when it was first used as a ground, or if its use ever became general until modern times, we do not know.

The early Italian painters used it at first to strengthen and smooth their pannel; and, I think, the Venetian painters were they who rendered its use general.

The most important pigments of the ancients appear to have been identical with our own.

The vehicles for colour have afforded matter for very needless controversy. The ancients generally used water, gums, and white of egg; they frequently, especially in the later schools of painting, used wax, often mixed with oil of some kind. They were acquainted with the use of oil as a varnish, and may have used both it and naphtha to paint with occasionally.

As early as the tenth century, oil was often used for particular kinds of painting; by the fourteenth, attempts were made (I need not say, without success) to paint with it on plaster; by the end of the fifteenth century, it had pretty well superseded other vehicles for all but fresco and distemper upon walls.

As to the tools, a palette, colour box, soft and hard brushes, scrapers, &c., of forms and materials differing but little, with a sponge and pumice stone, were used by all; and very few required more, when their pigments were once prepared. But the ancient painters, like the old Italians and Germans, had their colours ground in their own work-rooms: for this purpose, slabs of porphyry, or some other hard stone, with mullers to correspond; mortars of marble, or brass, or iron, with pestles of wood or metal, were requisite; and, in some cases, the very furnaces for calcining their ochres, or dissolving their gums, were of their own construction.

Hence the frequent mention of apprentice boys, who never reached higher in the art than colour-grinders. Others became mere mechanical copyists, multiplying in ancient times the actual patterns of certain gods and heroes, and in later times, favourite saints, or even whole compositions. But the better sort either equalled or excelled their masters. Apelles surpassed Pamphilus, Giotto excelled Cimabue, Raffaelle and Michael Angelo left their masters Perugino and Ghirlandaio far behind.