Of Wood Engraving and the method of executing it and concerning its
first Inventor: how Sheets which appear to be drawn by hand and
exhibit Lights and Half-tones and Shades are produced with three
Blocks of Wood.
§ 107. _Chiaroscuro Wood Engravings._
The first inventor of engraving on wood in three pieces for showing not
only the design but the shadows, half tints, and lights also was Ugo da
Carpi.[298] He invented the method of wood engraving in imitation of the
engravings on copper, cutting them on the wood of the pear tree or the
box which are excellent above all other kinds of wood for this work. He
made his blocks then in three pieces,[299] placing on the first all that
is contour and line; on the second all that is tinted near to the
outline, putting in the shadow with water colour; and on the third the
lights and the ground leaving the white of the paper to give the light,
and tingeing the rest for the ground. This third block containing the
light and the ground, is executed in the following manner. A sheet
printed by the first block, on which are all the contours and lines, is
taken wet and placed on the plank of the pear tree and weighted down
with other sheets which are not damp and so pressed upon that the wet
sheet leaves on the board the impression of all the outlines of the
figures. Then the painter takes white lead mixed with gum and puts in
the lights on the pear-wood. After this is done the engraver cuts them
all out with tools, according as they are marked. This block is that
which, duly primed with oil colour,[300] is used for the first process,
namely, to produce the lights and the ground, the whole surface,
therefore, is left tinted except just where it is hollowed out, because
there the paper remains white. The second block is that which gives
shadows. It is quite flat and tinted with water colour, except where the
shadows are not to come, because there the wood is hollowed out. And the
third, which is the first to be shaped, is that in which the whole
outlined part is hollowed out all over, except where there are no
profiles touched in with black by the pen.[301]
[Illustration:
PLATE XIV
CHIAROSCURO WOOD-ENGRAVING BY UGO DA CARPI
In the Print-Room, British Museum. Subject:—‘Jacob’s Dream,’ after
Raphael
]
These are printed at the press and are put under it three times, i.e.
once for each impression, so that they shall severally have the same
pressure. And certainly this was a most beautiful invention.
§ 108. _Dependence on Design of the Decorative Arts._
All these lines of work and ingenious arts, as one sees, are derived
from design, which is the necessary fount of all, for if they are
lacking in design they have nothing.[302] Therefore although all
processes and styles are good, that is best by which every lost thing is
recovered and every difficult thing becomes easy: as we shall see in
reading the Lives of the artists, who, aided by nature and by study have
done superhuman things solely by means of design. And thus, making an
end of the Introduction to the three Arts, treated perhaps at too great
length, which in the beginning I did not intend, I pass on to write the
Lives.
NOTES ON ‘INTRODUCTION’ TO PAINTING
FRESCO PAINTING.
[§ 81, _The Fresco Process_, ante, p. 221.]
The fresco process is generally regarded as one of several methods for
the production of pictures. It is better to consider it in the first
place as a colour finish to plaster work. What it produces is a coloured
surface of a certain quality of texture and a high degree of permanence,
and it is a secondary matter that this coloured surface may be so
diversified as to become a picture.
The history of the process is involved in obscurity, and it is not known
who first observed the fact that colours mixed only with water when laid
on a wet surface of lime plaster dried with the plaster and remained
permanently attached to it. The technique was however known to the
Romans, and we obtain the best idea of its essential character from the
notice of it by Vitruvius in the third chapter of his seventh book. It
is there treated in intimate connection with plaster work, as only the
last stage in the technical treatment of a wall. The wall is constructed
of stone or brick; it is then plastered; and the plaster is, or can be,
finally finished with a wash of colour. Of the character of this antique
plaster work something has already been said in a note to § 72, in
connection with Sculpture (ante, p. 171). It could be finished either in
a plain face of exquisite surface that might even be polished, or with
stamped ornaments in relief or figures modelled by hand; but it could
also be completed with colour in the form either of a plain tint or a
picture, and this colour would be applied by the fresco process.
Painting ‘a fresco’ means painting on the freshly laid and still wet
final coat of plaster. The pigments are mixed with nothing but pure
water, and the palette of the artist is limited by the fact that
practically speaking only the earth colours, such as the ochres, can be
used with safety; even the white has to be made from lime—the Italians
called it ‘bianco San Giovanni’—as lead white, called ‘biacca,’ is
inadmissible. Vegetable and metallic pigments are as a rule excluded
from use. The reason why pigments mixed with water only, without any gum
or similar binding material, adhere when dry to the plaster is a
chemical one. The explanation of it was given by Otto Dönner in an
Appendix to Helbig’s _Campanische Wandgemälde_, Leipzig, 1868, and is to
be found also in Professor Church’s _Chemistry of Paints and Painting_.
When limestone is burnt into lime all the carbonic acid is driven out of
it. The result of the slaking of the lime by water, which is preliminary
to its use in plastering, is that the material becomes saturated with an
aqueous solution of hydrate of lime. This hydrate of lime rises to the
surface of the plaster, and when the pigment is laid on, to use
Professor Church’s phrasing, it ‘diffuses into the paint, soaks it
through and through, and gradually takes up carbonic acid from the air,
thus producing carbonate of lime, which acts as the binding material.’
To put the matter in simpler language, lime when burnt loses its
carbonic acid, but gradually recovers it from the air, and incidentally
this carbonic acid, as it is re-absorbed, serves to fix the colours used
in the fresco process. It is a mistake to speak of the pigment ‘sinking
into the wet plaster.’ It remains on the surface, but it is fixed there
in a sort of crystalline skin of carbonate of lime which has formed on
the surface of the plaster. This crystalline skin gives a certain
metallic lustre to the surface of a fresco painting, and is sufficient
to protect the colours from the action of external moisture, though on
the other hand there are many causes chemical and physical that may
contribute to their decay. If however proper care have been taken
throughout, and atmospheric conditions remain favourable, the fresco
painting is quite permanent.
The process of painting, it will be easily seen, must be a rapid one,
for it must be completed before the plaster has time to dry, which it
would do if left for a night. Hence only a certain portion of the work
in hand is undertaken on each day and only so much of the final coat of
plaster, called by the Italians ‘intonaco,’ is laid by the plasterer as
will correspond to the amount the artist expects to cover before
nightfall. At the end of the day’s work, the plaster not painted on is
cut away round the outline of the work actually finished, and the next
morning a fresh patch is laid on and joined up as neatly as possible to
that of yesterday. In the making of these joints the ancient plasterer
seems to have been more expert than the Italians of the Renaissance, and
the seams are often pretty apparent in frescoes of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, so that they can be discerned in a good photograph.
When they can be followed, they furnish information, which it is often
interesting to possess, as to the amount that has been executed in a
single day.
To prevent loss of time it is necessary to have a full-sized cartoon in
readiness so that the drawing can be at once transferred to the coat of
wet plaster as soon as it has been laid. Vasari speaks of these cartoons
in § 77, in the second chapter on Painting, ante, p. 213. The use of the
iron stylus for impressing the lines of the drawing on the wet plaster
is to be traced in some of the later Italian frescoes. Another process
for carrying out the transfer was called ‘pouncing.’ For this the lines
of the cartoon were pricked and dabbed with a muslin bag filled with
powdered black, so as to show in dotted contours upon the wall.
Vasari is eloquent, both here and in a passage in his ‘Proemio’ to his
whole work, on the judgement, skill, and decision necessary to paint
successfully in fresco under these conditions and within these limits of
time. The ideal of the process was to complete each portion absolutely
at the one sitting. When the wall is once dry, any retouching,
reinforcement of shadows, and the like, must be done ‘a secco,’ ‘on the
dry,’ that is with pigments mixed with size, egg, or some other tempera,
which will bind them to the surface. These after-touches lack the
quality of texture and permanence of the true fresco (buon fresco). If
size or gum have been used, they can be washed off the wall, and having
been laid on a dry surface by a kind of hatching process they are harsh
and ‘liney.’ It is often possible in good large-scale photographs to
distinguish between the broad soft touches of the frescoist laid on
while the ground was wet, and the hard dry hatchings of the subsequent
retouching.
The illustration, Plate XV, has been chosen as a good example of the
fresco technique. It shows the head of Mary from Luini’s fresco of the
‘Marriage of the Virgin’ at Saronno. The painting is executed in a broad
and facile manner, the tints and tones which give the colour and the
modelling being deftly fused while the whole is wet, and the darker
details, such as the locks of the hair, are struck over the moist ground
so that the touches seem soft and have no appearance of hatching. The
light-coloured leaves of the garland round the head show the same
softness, and they are laid in with a full brush in thick pigment. On
the other hand there are marks of retouching where the shadows round the
eyes, the corner of the mouth, etc., have been reinforced ‘a secco,’
perhaps by a restorer. These show as thin, hard, wiry lines, and have
quite a different appearance from the work on the wet plaster.
It was only in the palmy days of Italian painting, from the latter part
of the fifteenth century onwards, that artists were able to dispense
almost entirely with retouching. In the earlier period of Giotto and his
successors much more was left to be done ‘a secco,’ but the Giottesques
fully understood the importance of doing all they could on the wet
plaster, and Cennini in the 67th chapter of his _Trattato_ insists that
‘to paint on the fresh, that is a fixed portion on each day, is the best
and most permanent way of laying on the colour, and the pleasantest
method of painting.’ The truth is that the technique of ‘buon fresco,’
while apparently understood by the Romans, was lost in the west during
the early middle ages, though it may have been maintained in the
Byzantine cloisters. In the course of the progressive improvements in
the art of painting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the old
technique was gradually recovered. Recently Ernst Berger, in his
_Beiträge zur Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Maltechnik_, I and II,
München, 2nd ed., 1904, has denied that the Romans used the fresco
technique, and has evolved an ingenious theory of a derivation of fresco
painting from the mural work in mosaic which flourished in the Early
Christian centuries. See note, ante, p. 255. Into the question thus
raised it is not necessary to enter, because no reader of Vitruvius or
Pliny can have the shadow of a doubt that they knew and were referring
to the fresco process. The words of Vitruvius (VII, iii) ‘Colores autem,
udo tectorio cum diligenter sunt inducti, ideo non remittunt sed sunt
perpetuo permanentes, quod calx,’ etc., and those of Pliny (XXXV, 49)
‘udo inlini recusant’ employed of certain colours which are known not to
be admissible in fresco are quite conclusive on this point, and it does
not advance science to build up elaborate theories on a denial of
obvious facts.
[Illustration:
PLATE XV
HEAD OF MARY, FROM LUINI’S FRESCO OF THE ‘MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN’ AT
SARONNO
(From a photograph by Giacomo Brogi)
]
TEMPERA PAINTING.
[§ 82, _Painting in Tempera_, ante, p. 223.]
In his appreciation of technical processes Vasari, it will be seen,
reserves his enthusiasm for fresco painting, but gives oil the advantage
over tempera (ante, p. 230) in that it (1) ‘kindles the colours,’ i.e.,
gives them greater brilliancy; (2) enables the artist to blend his
pigments on the panel or canvas so as to secure a melting, or as the
Italians say a ‘sfumato’ or ‘misty’ effect; (3) admits of a force and
liveliness in execution which makes the figures seem in relief upon the
surface, and finally (4), as he says at the beginning of chapter VII, is
a great convenience, ‘una gran comodità all’arte della pittura.’ The
only corresponding advantages on the side of tempera, as detailed in §
82, ante, p. 223 f., are the facts that all pigments can be used in it,
and that the same media serve for work on grounded or ungrounded panels
or on the dry plaster of walls; and that paintings in tempera are very
lasting. When Vasari came to write of his own works at the end of the
_Lives_ in the second edition, his conscience seems a little to have
smitten him, and he gives the process a word of special commendation. He
speaks of using it for some mural paintings in his private house which
he had just built at Arezzo, and says, ‘I have always reverenced the
memory and the works of the ancients, and seeing that this method of
colouring “a tempera” has fallen out of use, I conceived the desire of
rescuing it from oblivion. Hence I did all this work in tempera, a
process that certainly does not merit to be despised or neglected’
(_Opere_, VII, 686).
If antiquity and wide diffusion be criteria of rank among painting
processes, then tempera may claim the first place of all. The Spaniard
Pacheco, the father-in-law and teacher of Velasquez, remarks on the
veneration due to it because it had its birthday with art itself. As a
fact all the wall paintings in ancient Egypt and Babylonia and Mycenaean
Greece, all the mummy-cases and papyrus rolls in the first-named
country, are executed in tempera, and the same is probably true of all
the wall paintings in Italian tombs, as well as of the lost mural work
of Polygnotus and his school, and the panel paintings of all the Greek
artists save those who, in the later period after Alexander, adopted
encaustic. Though fresco was known as a mural process to the Romans it
was not used in the Early Christian catacomb paintings, nor in the
mediaeval wall paintings north of the Alps, for all these were in
tempera. For panel painting, both in the East and the West, save for a
doubtful and in any case limited use of oil, tempera was in constant
employment till in the fifteenth century it began to be superseded by
the new oil media popularized by the van Eycks. Even then tempera
maintained its ground, and it is not always realized that artists like
Mantegna, Botticelli and Dürer were as a rule in their panel work
tempera painters. In the case of mural work at any period fresco can
really never have wholly superseded tempera, for fresco can only be
worked on fresh plaster, while the artist must often have to decorate
walls already plastered and long ago dry. In this case there would be a
choice between replastering for fresco and the more economical
alternative of employing some form of tempera.
It is however with tempera painting on panels rather than with mural
work that we are here concerned. Vasari’s summary treatment of the
process in § 82 ante, p. 223, contrasts with Cennini’s far more
elaborate directions, and is a measure of the destructive effect of the
inroad of oil painting on the more venerable system. At the outset of
his _Trattato_ Cennini gives a list of the processes the panel painter
has to go through. The preliminary ones, before painting actually
begins, will take him six years to learn and Cennini needs about a
hundred chapters to describe them. The artificer must know how to grind
colours, to use glue, to fasten the linen on the panel, to prime with
gesso, to scrape and smooth the gesso, to make reliefs in gesso, to put
on bole, to gild, to burnish, to mix temperas, to lay on grounding
colours, to transfer by pouncing through pricked lines, to sharpen lines
with the stylus, to indent with little patterns, to carve, to colour, to
ornament the panel, and finally to varnish it! All this suggests, what
was actually the case, that the process of tempera painting was a very
precise and methodical one, proceeding by regular stages according to
traditional methods and recipes. The result was from the point of view
of modern painting something very limited, but within its range, and in
the hands of artists of the fifteenth century, it was a very finished
and exquisite artistic product, one indeed to which we return with
ever-renewed delight after our yearly visits to the Salon or to
Burlington House. A certain natural reaction, that some artists of
to-day have felt against the slashing impressionistic style, has led to
a revival of the old precise technique, which is now cultivated in
London in a Society of Painters in Tempera. It should be remembered that
it is perfectly possible to paint ‘a tempera’ in a free and loose
fashion with a full impasto and individualistic handling. If dry
powdered colours be mixed with the yolk or whole inside of an egg
without dilution, the resulting pigment is as full of body as oil paint
and can be manipulated in the same fashion. What is generally understood
however by the tempera style is the painting of the fifteenth century on
panel, in which, as Cennini indicates, the egg would be diluted with
about its own bulk of water. This rendered the pigment comparatively
thin and as a result transparent, and allowed coat to be laid over coat,
so that Cennini contemplates seven or eight or even ten coats of colour
tempered with egg yolk diluted with water. These are laid over an
underpainting in a monochrome of terra verte, and are so transparent
that even at the end the ground will remain slightly visible (c. 147)
and so help the modelling. It is however a difficulty in tempera that it
dries very quickly, too quickly to admit of that fusing of the tints
while the impasto is wet, which Vasari mentions as an advantage in the
oil process, § 83, ante, p. 230. Hence the usual ways to model in
tempera are (1) to superimpose coats varying in tone, and (2), to use
hatching, a process very observable in early Italian temperas, such as
some ascribed to Botticelli in the National Gallery. Another drawback,
not so marked however in egg tempera as in the size tempera with a basis
of whitening used by scenic artists, is that the colours dry lighter
than they appear when wet. Those who in the present day are enamoured of
the tempera process say that these inconveniences do not trouble them,
while they delight in the purity of the tints, the precision of the
forms, which it enables them to preserve, and in a certainty and
reposefulness which seem to belong to it. One of these writes as the
result of her experience ‘In tempera you work with solid paints, and
blending must be extremely rapid, or a substitute for this must be found
in thin washes or in hatching. Crisp work is again a great beauty, but
from the rapid drying of the paint in the brush, and its un-tenacious
quality, it is a difficulty. Vasari is right in saying oil is a great
_convenience_, but its introduction does not seem to have been in all
respects a gain.’
OIL PAINTING.
[§ 83, _Oil Painting, its Discovery and Early History_, ante, p. 226.]
The bare fact of the invention of oil painting by John of Bruges,
recorded by Vasari in 1550 in chapter VII of his ‘Introduction’ to
Painting, is in the Life of Antonello da Messina, in the same edition,
retold in the personal anecdotic vein that accords with Vasari’s
literary methods. Here the ‘invention’ followed on the splitting of a
particular tempera panel, varnished in oil, that according to
traditional practice van Eyck had put out in the sun to dry. The said
artist then turned his attention to devising some means for avoiding
such mischances for the future, and, in Vasari’s words, ‘being not less
dissatisfied with the varnish than with the process of tempera painting,
he began to devise means for preparing a kind of varnish which should
dry in the shade, so as to avoid having to place the pictures in the
sun. Having made experiments with many things both pure and in
compounds, he at last found that linseed and nut oil, among the many
which he had tested, were more drying than all the rest. These
therefore, boiled with other mixtures of his, made him the varnish which
he had long desired.’ This varnish, Vasari goes on to say, he mixed with
the colours and found that it ‘lit up the colours so powerfully that it
gave a gloss of itself,’ without any after-coat of varnish.
If we ask What is the truth about this ‘invention’ of van Eyck, or of
the brothers van Eyck (see ante, p. 226, note 1), the first answer of
any one knowing alike the earlier history of the oil medium and Vasari’s
anecdotal predilections would be ‘there was no invention at all.’ The
drying properties of linseed and nut oil, and the way to increase these,
had been known for hundreds of years, as had also the preparation of an
oil varnish with sandarac resin. There is question too of a colourless
spirit varnish, and of the process of mixing varnish with oil for a
painting medium, in documents prior to the fifteenth century. The
technique of oil painting is described by Theophilus, about 1100 A.D.;
in the _Hermeneia_ or Mount Athos Handbook; and in the _Trattato_ of
Cennini, while numerous accounts and records of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries establish incontestably, at any rate for the lands
north of the Alps, the employment of oils and varnishes for artistic
wall and panel painting. The epitaphs for the tombs of the two van Eycks
make no mention of such a feat as Vasari ascribes to them, and it is
quite open to any one to argue, as is the case with M. Dalbon in his
recent _Origines de la Peinture à l’Huile_, Paris, 1904, that it was no
special improvement in technique that brought the van Eycks their fame
in connection with oil painting, but rather an artistic improvement that
consisted in using a traditional process to execute pictures which in
design, finish, beauty, and glow of colour, far surpassed anything
previously produced in the northern schools. There is a good deal of
force in this view, but at the same time it is impossible to deny to the
van Eycks the credit of technical improvements. They had a reputation
for this long before the time of Vasari. In 1456, fifteen years after
the death of the younger brother Jan, Bartolomeo Facio of Spezia wrote a
tract _De Viris Illustribus_ in which he spoke of John van Eyck as
specially ‘learned in those arts which contributed to the making of a
picture, and on that account credited with the discovery of many things
in the properties of colours, which he had learned from ancient
traditions recorded by Pliny and other writers.’ The Florentine
Filarete, c. 1464, knew of the repute of Jan van Eyck in connection with
the oil technique. Hence we may credit the van Eycks with certain
technical improvements on traditional practices and preparations in the
oil technique, though these can hardly be termed the ‘invention of oil
painting,’ while their artistic achievement was great enough to force
into prominence whatever in the technical department they had actually
accomplished.
The question of the exact technique of the van Eycks, in its relation to
the oil practice before their time, is one that has occupied many minds,
and is not yet satisfactorily settled. Most of those who have enunciated
theories on the subject have proceeded by guess-work, and have suggested
media and processes that may possibly have been used, but for the
employment of which there is no direct evidence. The most recent
suggestion is that of Principal Laurie of Edinburgh, and this is founded
on scientific analysis. The experiments with oils and varnishes and
other media, which this investigator has been carrying on for many
years, have taught him that the most secure substance for ‘locking-up’
pigments as the phrase goes, that is for shielding them from the access
of moisture or deleterious gases, is a resin, like our Canada balsam,
that may be used as a varnish or painting medium when dissolved in an
essential oil. As he believes he can detect in the van Eycks’ extant
pictures pigments that would only have lasted had they been shielded by
a preparation of the kind, he conjectures that the use of a natural pine
balsam, with probably a small proportion of drying oil and rendered more
workable by emulsifying with egg, may be the real secret of which so
many investigators have been in search. For example, the green used for
the robe of John Baptist and other figures in the ‘Adoration of the
Lamb’ at Ghent can be matched, as we lately found by experiment, with
verdigris (dissolved in pine balsam which is a much finer green than
verdigris ground in oil) and yellow ochre or orpiment, and the only
known way of rendering verdigris stable is to dissolve it in these pine
balsams, according to a recipe that is actually preserved in the de
Mayerne MS., which Berger has lately printed in full in the fourth Part
of his _Beiträge_.
Be this as it may, one thing is certain, that the oil painting of the
van Eycks and other painters of the early Flemish school did not differ
greatly if at all in its artistic effect from the tempera that had
preceded it, and that is described in the last note. Oil painting, in
the sense that we attach to the term, is really the creation not of the
Flemings, nor of the Florentines and other Italians who were the first
to try experiments with the new Flemish process, but of Giovanni Bellini
and the other Venetians who adopted the oil medium in the last quarter
of the fifteenth century. According to Vasari, ante, p. 229, and _Life_
of Antonello da Messina, _Opere_, II, 563 f., it was the last named
artist who acquired the secret of the invention of van Eyck through a
visit to Flanders, and brought it to Venice. Vasari has been proved to
be wrong in the chronology he gives of the life of Antonello, who was
born about 1444 and was therefore much younger than Vasari makes him,
and many critics have been disposed to relegate his whole account of the
Sicilian painter to the realm of myth. The most recent authority on the
subject however, Dr von Wurtzbach, in his _Niederländisches
Künstler-Lexicon_, vindicates Vasari’s accuracy in the main points of
the visit to Flanders and the introduction of the new process at Venice,
which event may be fixed about 1475. It was taken up with avidity by the
Bellini and by other Venetians of the time, and it is to the younger
Bellini more than to any other painter that is due the apprehension of
the possibilities latent in the oil medium. Giovanni Bellini began to
manipulate the oil pigments with a freedom and a feeling for their
varied qualities of which earlier oil painters had possessed little
idea, and the way was prepared for the splendid unfolding of the
technique in the hands of Giorgione, Palma, and Titian.
ENRICHED FAÇADES.
[§§ 90–92, ante, p. 240 f.]
The external decorations, of which Vasari writes in chapters XI, XII,
and XIII of his ‘Introduction’ to Painting, have come down to us in a
very dilapidated condition, but there are still to be seen specimens of
all the work he there describes, as well as of the decorative carvings
in stone noticed in the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, under the head
of Travertine (at Rome) § 12, Istrian stone (at Venice) § 15, and Pietra
forte (at Florence) § 17; ante, pp. 51, 56, 60. The most common
technique is monochrome painting ‘a fresco’ on the plaster, and a good
deal that passes as sgraffito is really only painted work in which there
is no relief. One of the best existing displays is that on the façade of
the Palazzo Ricci, at Rome, a little to the west of the Palazzo Farnese.
Here on the top floor are painted trophies of armour in bronze colour
(ante, p. 241) with grotesques (ante, p. 244) in yellow and brown on the
story below. On the _piano nobile_ there is a frieze of figures in
grisaille monochrome, with some single figures on a larger scale between
the windows. Above the door is another frieze of figures on a black
ground. More extensive, but less varied and not so well preserved, are
the figure compositions on the back of the Palazzo Massimi, in the
Piazza dei Massimi, at Rome, where the whole wall is covered with figure
monochromes on a large scale on dark grounds. There are many more
fragmentary specimens, as in the Via Maschera d’ Oro, No. 7; the Via
Pellegrino, No. 66, etc. The work of Maccari, _Roma, Graffiti e
Chiaroscuri, Secolo XV, XVI_, gives a large collection of reproductions
of work that has now to a great extent perished.
Sgraffito-work, in which the effect is produced by differences of plane
in the plaster itself (see ante, p. 243), resists the weather much
better than mere painting, but it takes longer to execute and was not so
much used as the more rapidly wrought fresco. The Palazzo Montalvo, in
the Borgo degli Albizzi at Florence, offers a good example of a
compromise. The work, at any rate in the lower part, is not true
sgraffito as the plaster in the backgrounds is not scraped away, but the
outlines of the figures and ornaments are marked by lines incised in the
plaster, the brush, with light and dark tints, accomplishing the rest.
On the other hand the house of Bianca Capello, 26 in the Via Maggio, is
decorated in the true sgraffito technique as described by Vasari, ante,
p. 243. The same may be said of a house in Rome, Via Maschera d’ Oro,
No. 9, where the difference of the two planes of plaster is about an
eighth of an inch. This work is clogged up with buff lime-wash and would
be worth cleaning, as it seems in fair preservation.
Of modelled stucco figure designs and grotesques the Cortile of the
Palazzo Spada, near the Campo di Fiore at Rome, presents the most
extensive display. A more interesting piece of work will however be
found not far away in the Via de’ Banchi Vecchi, Nos. 22–24, the house
of the goldsmith Pietro Crivelli of Milan, of the first half of the
sixteenth century. Here between the windows of the first floor are
boldly designed trophies of arms carved in travertine, while between and
above the windows of the second floor there are figures and grotesques
effectively modelled in stucco. These are outlined with an incised line
in the stucco and there is no colour. For free but not over-florid
Renaissance enrichment the façade is noteworthy. The abundant stone
carving at Florence in the form of the ‘stemmi’ has been already
referred to, ante, p. 61.
STUCCO ‘GROTESQUES.’
[§ 92, _Grotesques or fanciful devices painted or modelled on walls_,
ante, p. 244.]
Vasari touches on the subject of plaster work in all three
‘Introductions,’ to Architecture (§ 29), to Sculpture (§ 73) and to
Painting (§ 92). In the former passages he deals with the material
itself and with what may be called its utilitarian employment; in the
last he has in view the artistic forms into which the material can be
moulded, and which he calls by the curious name ‘grotesques.’ What these
‘grotesques’ are will presently be seen, but it is worth while first
casting a glance back on the artistic use of plaster in its historical
aspects.
It is not a little remarkable that although all the great ancient
nations were familiar with this material, it was not till the late Greek
and Greco-Roman periods that any general use was made of it as an
independent vehicle of artistic effect. The Egyptians coated their walls
with plaster of exquisite quality, which they brought to a fine, almost
a polished, surface for their tempera paintings. The inhabitants of
Mesopotamia protected their mud-brick walls with thin coats of lime
plaster, sometimes only about a quarter of an inch in thickness but
perfect in durability and weather-resisting properties. The Phoenicians
at Carthage plastered the interior walls of their tombs, and the
expression ‘whited sepulchres’ shows that Jewish tombs were coated in
the same fashion. All through the historical period of Greek art plaster
was at the command of the architect, to cover, and fill up inequalities
in, the rough stone of which so many of the Hellenic temples were built,
and fragments of the pre-Persian buildings of the Athenian Acropolis,
still preserved on the rock, show how finely finished and how adhesive
was this stucco film. So far as we know however none of the peoples just
named seem to have modelled in the material, or used it for any of the
decorative purposes for which the Greeks at any rate employed so largely
the material of burnt clay. The exception is in the case of the older
Aegean peoples, for the Cretans of Knossos made, as all the world now
knows, a most effective artistic use of modelled stucco. This Aegean
work may be connected technically with Egypt, for in the latest Egyptian
period a considerable use was made of modelled plaster for sepulchral
purposes, in the form of mummy-cases in which the features of the
deceased, with headdress, jewels, etc., were represented in this
material. The technique may go back in Egypt to the remoter times and
may have been carried thence to the Aegean lands. The process however
was apparently not inherited by the historical Greeks, who did not begin
to use plaster freely and artistically till the later Hellenistic or
Greco-Roman period.
Some late Greek private houses of the second or first century B.C., on
Delos, show a beginning of modelled plaster work in the form of drafted
ashlar stones imitated in the material, and it may be conjectured that
the technique was developed at Alexandria, for the earliest existing
mature works in the style, the famous stucco reliefs and mouldings found
near the Villa Farnesina at Rome, resemble in many respects the
so-called ‘Hellenistic’ reliefs, with landscape motives, that are
ascribed to the school of Alexandria. In these stuccoes, now preserved
in the Terme Museum at Rome, there are bands of enrichment stamped with
wooden moulds, after the fashion described by Vasari in the
‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, § 73, that enclose fields wherein figure
compositions with landscape adjuncts, or single figures, have been
modelled by hand. Many of these last are of great beauty of form, and
the whole have been executed with the lightest but firmest touch and the
most delightful freedom. Some ceiling decorations in two tombs on the
Via Latina, of the second century A.D., are almost as good in execution,
and are interesting as giving in typical form ancient models that have
been much copied at the Renaissance and in more modern times.
Early Christian artists, both in the West and in the East kept up the
artistic use of stamped or modelled stucco. The Arabs inherited the
technique, and at Cairo, and in the East and in Spain, they made a very
extensive and tasteful use of the tractable material in their own style
of artistic decoration. This style, like that of Byzantium, from which
in great part it was derived; and that of the familiar Indian work in
the exquisite marble-dust plaster or chunam, is chiefly surface
decoration, without much plastic feeling, and relying mainly on
geometrical, or at any rate inorganic, motives and forms. Bold modelling
of forms accentuated by light and shade, as we are kindly informed by Dr
James Burgess, does occur in old Buddhist work in northern India, and
some excellent examples have recently been published in _Ancient Khotan_
(Chinese Turkistan) Oxford, 1907, vol. I, p. 587 and pl. liii ff. The
work however belongs essentially to the West rather than to the East,
and the middle ages in Western Europe produced some remarkable works in
this style. There is some modelled stuccowork of early date in the
Baptistry at Ravenna, but the most interesting examples of the period in
Italy are the large figures of saints and the archivolt enriched with
very bold and effective vine scrolls, that are to be seen in the
interior of the little oratory of S. Maria in Valle (or Peltrude’s
chapel) at Cividale in Friuli. These very remarkable works, with which
may be connected the stuccoes of the altar ciborium at S. Ambrogio,
Milan, date about 1100, and may be paralleled by similar figures,
equally plastic in treatment, and of about the same period, north of the
Alps, in St. Michael’s at Hildesheim. Signor Cattaneo calls the Cividale
work ‘Byzantine,’ but life-sized plastically-treated figures in high
relief represent a form of decorative art that was not practised at
Byzantium, and the work, like a good deal else that is too lightly
dubbed ‘Byzantine,’ is no doubt of western origin, and is a proof that
the tradition of modelling in plaster was handed down without a break
through the mediaeval period.
At the Renaissance the tradition was revived, and this style of
decoration was developed in Tuscany and North Italy, while one of its
most conspicuous triumphs was the adornment by Italian artists in the
first half of the sixteenth century of the Galerie François Premier and
Escalier du Roi at Fontainebleau in France. It spread also to our own
country, where artists of the Italian school carried out work in the
same thoroughly plastic style in the now destroyed palace of Nonsuch,
under the patronage of Henry VIII.
This is not however the style that Vasari has in view when he speaks of
‘stucco grotesques.’ What he means is an imitation of ancient stamped
and modelled plaster decoration, of the type of that represented in the
tombs on the Via Latina just referred to. Here the scale is small,
though the work may cover large spaces, and the design is on the whole
of a light and fanciful kind. The impulse to it dates from the early
years of the sixteenth century when considerable discoveries were made
at Rome, in the Baths of Titus and elsewhere, of antique apartments or
sepulchral chambers decorated in this fashion. As these interiors, when
discovered, were all underground they were called ‘caves’ or ‘grottoes,’
and for this reason, as Benvenuto Cellini informs us in the 6th chapter
of his _Autobiography_, the decoration characteristic of them was called
‘grotesque.’ The fact that the designs were so commonly of the fantastic
or so-called ‘Pompeian’ order has given to the word ‘grotesque’ its
modern meaning of bizarre or semi-ludicrous.
According to Vasari, the painter Morto da Feltro (c. 1474–c. 1519) was
the first to study these antique decorations. ‘Our first thanks and
commendations’ he says (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, V, 205 f.) ‘are due to
Morto, who was the first to discover and restore the kind of painting
called “arabesques” and “grotesques,” seeing that they were for the most
part hidden among the subterraneous portions of the ruins of Rome,
whence he brought them, devoting all his study to this branch of art.’
He spent many months also, Vasari tells us, at Tivoli among the ruins of
Hadrian’s Villa, and made a journey to Pozzuoli near Naples, all on the
same quest. Stucco reliefs in this revived antique style were used at
the beginning of the sixteenth century by Pinturicchio in the
Appartamenti Borgia in the Vatican, and from that time onwards they
become exceedingly common.
TARSIA WORK, OR WOOD INLAYS.
[§ 100, _Inlays in Wood_, ante, p. 262.]
The covering of one kind of material by another, for reasons of a
constructive or an aesthetic kind, is so primitive and so universal that
Gottfried Semper made it the fundamental principle of decoration in
general, and developed this view in his famous ‘Bekleidungstheorie,’
which dominates _der Stil_. Semper’s philosophy of art was sufficiently
profound for him to see that this process is not to be accused of
insincerity because the more costly or beautiful material appears only
on the outside, while the mass of the structure may be of commoner
fabric. The materials in question are as a rule limited in quantity and
it would be bad economy to employ them in positions where their beauty
would not be seen. To build a thick wall of rare finely-veined and
coloured marble in solid blocks would be to behave like degenerate Roman
Emperors. Such material is far more suitably treated when it is exposed
in thin layers over as large a superficial area as possible. Hence
though there is nothing in the world to equal the fine ‘isodomon’
masonry of the earlier Greeks, which is the same throughout, there is
much to be said in justification of the late Greek and Roman technique,
so largely used in mediaeval Italy, of incrusting a common material with
one of finer grain and colour.
In the case of wood inlays, it may be claimed for the craft that it
originates in material need and not in any aesthetic considerations.
Wood, of which the grain always runs one way, needs sometimes to be
overlaid, braced, and prevented from warping by a slip of the same
material placed with the grain at right angles to the first, after the
fashion seen in our common drawing-boards. The great variety in colours
and markings shown by different woods must however at a very early date
have led to the employment of inlays and veneers for reasons of artistic
effect, and in this craft the old Oriental peoples were proficient. It
is worthy of notice that some Greek wood inlays have survived, and may
be seen in the Kertch room at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The
motives of all early inlays are either geometrical patterns or simple
conventional ornament, like the olive sprays which are represented in
the Greek work just mentioned. In these forms the craft was preserved
through the mediaeval period, and though in the West, at any rate north
of the Alps, the mediaeval epoch was one in which ornamentation was
plastic rather than graphic, that is to say, in carving more often than
in inlay, yet in Moorish lands, and in parts of Italy, inlays, both in
stone and wood, were freely developed.
The history of Italian tarsia work takes a new start with the beginning
of the Renaissance, and it became as Bode has termed it ‘a true child of
the art of the Quattrocento’ or fifteenth century. The earliest examples
seem to be in geometrical schemes, influenced by the so-called ‘Cosmati’
work, or inlays of small pieces of coloured stones and gilded pastes, so
common in Italy from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. The painted
borders to the frescoes of Giotto and other pre-Renaissance masters
imitate this kind of work and show how familiar it must have been. Next
come conventional ornaments in the so-called ‘Italian’ manner,
consisting in acanthus scrolls, swags of fruit and flowers, with
classical motives such as horns of plenty and candelabra, among which
are soon introduced ‘putti’ or Cupids, terminal figures, etc. As the
fifteenth century advanced there was developed the curious _penchant_,
noticed ante, p. 264, for introducing perspective delineations of
buildings and articles of furniture into the tarsia designs. Vasari in
his Life of Filippo Brunelleschi _Opere_, ed. Milanesi, II, 333 (see
also the text ante, p. 262), distinctly intimates that this was due to
the influence of this artist, whose enthusiasm for perspective studies
is well known. The only existing works in wood inlay which might claim
to be designed or inspired by Brunelleschi are those in the old sacristy
of S. Lorenzo at Florence, but these do not display perspectives, and
the subjects comprise only ‘putti’ with candelabra, rosettes, and other
simple ornaments. The influence of Brunelleschi on the advancement of
the study of perspective was however so great, that Vasari’s view of his
general responsibility for the perspectives is credible.
With the perspective designs of the latter part of the fifteenth and
beginning of the sixteenth century, was developed the elaborate
delineation of objects of still-life, as well as more ambitious work in
the representation of the human figure, alone or in groups. These inlays
were abundantly displayed in wall panelling and on the doors of presses,
and more especially on the backs and frames of choir stalls in the
churches. It is characteristic of Italian decoration as opposed to that
prevailing at an earlier date north of the Alps, to find choir stalls,
which in northern churches are made the occasion of the most splendid
display of wood carving in the boldest architectural and plastic styles
which the world has to show, decorated in Italy for the most part in a
pictorial style with flat inlays.
The number of extant examples, both in the case of presses and of choir
stalls, is so great that no enumeration is possible, and the reader is
referred for a critical account of the chief monuments of the art to the
small book by Dr Scherer, _Technik und Geschichte der Intarsia_,
Leipzig, 1891. The artists who fostered the work were also very
numerous, and represent many centres in the northern parts of Italy. We
learn for instance that in Florence alone in the year 1478 there were no
fewer than 84 _botteghe_ where tarsia work was in full practice. The
names actually mentioned by Vasari will suffice to represent the chief
phases of the craft. If Brunelleschi may have started the idea of
perspective designs, these were carried out to great perfection by Fra
Giovanni da Verona, whose master-works, the stalls and presses in S.
Maria in Organo at Verona, dating from about 1500 onwards, are among the
most famous examples of the kind. Here are perspectives of buildings and
furniture, objects of still-life, and the like, with geometrical
patterns in the framings and on the dado. In figure work Benedetto da
Majano, whom Vasari mentions, and more especially his brother Giuliano
da Majano, were masters of the very first rank, and the examples left by
the latter on the presses of the sacristy of the Duomo at Florence, and
on the door leading to the Sala d’ Udienza in the Palazzo Vecchio, are
masterpieces of technique and style. At a later date near the middle of
the century, the artist mentioned by Vasari towards the end of his
chapter XVII, Fra Damiano of Bergamo, a pupil of the same Venetian
school from which proceeded Fra Giovanni of Verona, executed at S.
Domenico in Bologna a series of works in tarsia that represent the
furthest development in a pictorial direction that the craft ever
attained.
[Illustration:
PLATE XVI
EXAMPLE OF TARSIA WORK
S. Zenobi, by Giuliano da Majano, in Opera del Duomo, Florence
]
Of this display however Dr Scherer aptly writes (p. 80) that, ‘whoever
demands from wood an effect similar to that of a picture, sets it in
ignorance of its nature to tasks that are beyond its capabilities, and
constrains material and technique to exaggerated efforts which are
contradictory to their character. This is the fundamental error that
clings to all the works of the much-belauded Fra Damiano and is
calculated seriously to obscure his greatness.’ The development of
tarsia work was in the direction of pictorial effects. Though purely
decorative patterns of a geometrical or conventional kind were always
used, they tended as the art advanced to be confined to borders and
subsidiary parts of a design, while the principal fields were
pictorially treated. The introduction of perspectives naturally led to
the accentuation of the third dimension of objects, and in still-life
compositions modelling and shading were deemed essential. The human
figure, the use of which increased greatly as the fifteenth century
advanced, was given its plastic roundness which it was assuming in the
contemporary frescoes. Conventional leafage, etc., was no longer treated
for the effect of a mere flat pattern. In the latter part of the century
the figure work of Giuliano da Majano shows how far in this direction
the art could be carried while still preserving its sincerity as a
mosaic of natural woods. In this work the utmost advantage is taken of
the varieties shown by woods in colour and texture, without dependence
on artificial colouring matters, and those pictorial refinements over
which Vasari sings his usual paean, but which really prefigure the
decline of the art. A close examination of a specimen of Giuliano’s
inlays of about 1470–80, such as the S. Zenobi now in the Opera del
Duomo at Florence (see Plate XVI), shows extraordinary skill and
patience in the laborious work. The outlines are marked by thin strips
of black wood; the staff which the Saint holds in his hand, though it is
not half-an-inch broad, is modelled in light and shade with no fewer
than six parallel strips of wood varying in light and dark. The hands
are carefully modelled in inlays. The mouth of the figure on the right
of the Saint has one piece for the upper lip and a lighter piece for the
lower in which the two lights on the lobes are let in with separate
pieces. The shadow between the lips and the light on the lower edge of
the lower lip are inserted with strips of dark and light tinted wood. In
one of the most interesting works of the da Majano brothers, the two
portrait figures of Dante and Petrarch, on the door leading into the
Sala d’ Udienza in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, the face of the
older poet is deeply furrowed, and in order to prevent the inlaid
streaks appearing too hard and ‘liney’ they are made up of an infinite
number of little morsels of wood the size and shape of millet grains,
each one glued down into its place. Such work impresses the spectator by
its sincerity and earnestness as well as by its technical mastery.
The use of artificial colouring matters, over and above the burning
which was the first device employed to give an effect of shading in
special places, destroys for us this aspect of sincerity. The material
is no longer allowed to express itself in its own character, and taste
revolts from the work as it does from tapestry in which pigments have
been used to give details for which stitches should in the theory of the
work suffice. The case is different from that of the coloured wax
medallions noticed ante, p. 188 f., where the scale is so small, and the
detailed representation of nature so essential a part of the work, that
waxes coloured in the piece could hardly be made to avail.
THE STAINED GLASS WINDOW.
[§ 101, _Stained Glass Windows, their Origin and History_, ante, p.
265.]
This is not a specially Italian form of the decorative art, but belongs
rather to France and north-western Europe. A proof of this may be found
in the fact that in 1436 the Florentines have to send for a worker in
glass from Lübeck in Germany to make windows for their Duomo (Gaye,
_Carteggio_, II, 441 f.), while at the beginning of the next century
Pope Julius II summons French _verriers_ to supply coloured windows for
the Vatican (see ante, p. 266, note). The art was differently regarded
north and south of the Alps, and Vasari in his account of it gives, in §
102, the tradition of the northern schools, but lets us see at the same
time, in § 101, how the Italians were accustomed to envisage the craft.
There is accordingly in his treatment a confusion between two distinct
ideals of the art, one traditional and northern, the other congenial to
an Italian painter of the sixteenth century. According to the first
ideal of the art, that on which it was founded and nurtured north of the
Alps, it depended for its effect upon coloured glass, that is upon the
varied tints of pieces of glass stained in the mass with metallic
oxides, and called by the moderns ‘pot-metal.’ These different coloured
pieces were so arranged and so treated as to give the appearance of
figures or ornaments, and to this extent the effect was pictorial, but
such a window would depend for its beauty far more on the sumptuous
display of coloured light than on any delineation of figures or objects.
The sort of window which would present itself to the Italian of the
Renaissance, as representing his ideal of the art, is rather a
transparent picture painted on glass, in which delineation is the chief
part of the effect. This is the view that Vasari has in mind, when, in §
101, he insists on transparency in the glass employed. The old glass
worker of Chartres or the Sainte Chapelle would hardly have known what
to do with transparent uncoloured glass, for this, save in pearl
borders, was not an element with which he worked. Vasari however starts
with the idea of clear glass and imagines it coloured in such a way as
to produce a transparent picture. There were two methods for this
colouring. The only satisfactory one was to paint in transparent enamel
colours which were afterwards burnt in on to the glass. This was a
process specially developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in
Flanders, whence it was probably introduced into Italy.
The other method was to employ transparent pigments, such as were used
for ordinary painting, and to fix them on the glass by means of gum or
varnish. This method is of course a mere _pis aller_ to which no
self-respecting worker in glass would like to have recourse, and must be
regarded as merely a cheap imitation of true glass-painting in enamel
colours. That is to say, it did not _precede_, as Vasari suggests in §
101, but followed as an imitation, the development of true enamel
painting. That the two processes were in use in Italy in Vasari’s time
is shown by a contract printed by Gaye, _Carteggio_, II, 446, in which
certain windows to be executed at Arezzo in 1478 are to be ‘_cotte al
fuoco_,’ ‘burned in the fire,’ and not merely to have the colours
‘_messi a olio_,’ ‘laid on in oil paint.’
The earlier glass workers of the palmy days of the craft, from the
twelfth to the fourteenth century, in France, England, Flanders, or
Germany, aimed at different effects altogether, and their technique is
explained by Vasari in § 102, (ante, p. 268), where the whole character
of the work envisaged differs from the painted work previously in
contemplation. As is indicated in a footnote to the text, the
description of the work, which starts it will be noticed with ‘bits of
red, yellow, blue, and white glass,’ not with a clear pane, is almost
exactly what we find in Theophilus, though a little less simple, and
represents the early tradition of the mediaeval masters. Their work was
the development of an Early Christian technique. Coloured glass, which
it must be remembered is really easier to procure than glass perfectly
clear, was first used in little rounds or squares for insertion in the
holes pierced in marble or plaster slabs that filled window openings.
Such window fillings are to be seen in mosques and Byzantine churches.
The next stage was a mosaic of pieces of coloured glass arranged on a
certain scheme and perhaps displaying geometrical patterns. No specimens
of early windows of this kind seem to have survived, but they are
referred to in contemporary documents, as in the _Liber Pontificalis_,
where it is said that Leo III, 795–816, in Old St. Peter’s, ‘fenestras
de apsida ex vitro diversis coloribus conclusit.’ It is not clear
whether such mosaics, or something more pictorial, is referred to by
Abbot Gozbert of Tegernsee about the year 1000 A.D. as ‘_discoloria
picturarum vitra_,’ but about this same epoch we find it stated of
Archbishop Adalberon of Reims, who died in 989 A.D., that he supplied
his church with ‘_fenestris diversas continentibus historias_,’ which
certainly implies something more than the kaleidoscope effect of a mere
conjunction of coloured pieces. Theophilus, whose treatment of the
process shows that it was fully established at the time of his writing,
say about 1100 A.D., makes it clear wherein the innovation consisted.
The new invention was that of a pigment, of a brown colour when fused,
with which could be painted any details or shading required for
representing the forms of objects. A mere patch of pale flesh-coloured
glass the shape of a face would tell nothing, but when the features, the
locks of the hair, and the like, were painted in with this pigment then
the patch became a human countenance. In the same way a piece of red or
blue glass with some lines and shading on it became a garment, and so on
with the representation in a simple and summary fashion of the objects
necessary to constitute the sort of pictorial representation suitable to
the technique. The coloured glass remained throughout the essential
element in the effect. All the finest glass windows of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries were executed with these simple media. The later
history of the art shows as usual a progressive advance in the
importance of the pictorial element, till by the sixteenth century
coloured glass is scarcely needed, and the pictorial effect desired may
be gained by fusing pigments on to clear glass, in the way Vasari
contemplates in § 101 (ante, p. 267).
Of this Italian stained glass of the Renaissance period very good
examples are to be seen in the Laurentian Library at Florence, and a
specimen is shown on Plate XVII.
[Illustration:
PLATE XVII
PAINTED GLASS WINDOW IN THE LAURENTIAN LIBRARY, FLORENCE
]
Chapter XIII of Charles Heath Wilson’s _Life and Works of Michelangelo_
contains a good critical notice of the decorative work at the Laurentian
Library. The windows, which were not executed till long after the death
of Clement VII whose name appears on the glass, he thinks may be mainly
from the designs of Vasari’s friend Francesco Salviati, a pupil of the
glass painter Guglielmo da Marcillat. He writes of them:—‘These windows
both in design and colour are admirably suited to Italian architecture,
and offer useful lessons at the present time. Introduced into a Library
where plenty of light was indispensable, white glass prevails. There is
much yellow (silver) stain, and where colour is wanted in some parts,
pot metal is introduced, but there is not much of it. The shadows are
vigorously painted in enamel brown of a rich tone. Unlike modern painted
glass, the figures and ornaments are drawn with all the skill of an
educated artist, and it is a pleasure to look at them.’
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London affords the opportunity for a
comparison of all these different styles. There is some original glass
of the thirteenth century from the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, made of
small pieces of very richly tinted glass, coloured in the mass, the
effect being more that of a very rich and beautiful diaper pattern than
a picture; while close by may be seen a Flemish window of 1542, in which
the pieces of glass are of large size and in many cases are white, the
necessary colouring being added in different enamel pigments. The
subject is the Last Supper, and a purely pictorial result is aimed at,
the effect of colour being as a fact extremely poor.
VASARI’S DESCRIPTION OF ENAMEL WORK.
[§ 105, _Enamels over Reliefs_, ante, p. 276.]
Coloured vitreous pastes are among the most valuable materials at the
command of the decorative artist, and are employed in numerous crafts,
as for example for the glazes of keramic products including floor or
wall tiles, for painted glass windows, for glass mosaic, and for enamel
work. The glass is tinged in the mass with various metallic oxides, one
of the finest colours being a ruby red gained from gold. Silver gives
yellow, copper a blue-green, cobalt blue, manganese violet, and so on.
Tin in any form has the property of making the vitreous paste opaque.
The material is generally lustrous, and it admits of a great variety in
colours some of which are highly saturated and beautiful. It is on the
lustre and colour of the substance, more than on the pictorial designs
that can be produced by its aid, that its artistic value depends.
The difference between opaque and transparent coloured glass is the
basis of a division that can be made among the crafts which employ the
material. If the glass be kept transparent the finest possible effect is
obtained from it in the stained glass window where the colours are seen
by transmitted light. A similar effect is secured on a minute scale in
that form of enamel work called by Labarte ‘emaux à plique à jour,’ or
‘transparent cloisonné enamel,’ in which transparent coloured pastes are
fused into small apertures in metal plates. Old examples in this kind
are very rare, but modern workers seem to reproduce it without
difficulty. On the other hand transparent or more usually opaque
vitreous pastes in thin films form many of the so-called ‘glazes’ which
give the charm of lustre and colour to so many products of the potter’s
art. The most effective use of opaque coloured glass is in wall mosaic,
where it is seen by reflected light, and owes its beauty to its
lustrousness as well as to the richness and variety of its hues. Between
these two crafts of the stained glass window and mosaic comes that of
the enameller, who makes use of vitreous pastes both in an opaque and a
transparent condition. The identity of the materials in these different
uses is shown by the fact that Theophilus, Bk. II, ch. 12, directs the
enameller to pound up and melt for his incrustations the very cubes used
in old mosaics, or as he puts it ‘in antiquis aedificiis paganorum in
musivo opere diversa genera vitri.’ Enamel work consists in fusing these
coloured pastes over surfaces that are generally of metal, the different
tints being either distinctly separated by divisions, or else running
beside each other, or again interpenetrating like the colours in a
picture. Hence there are two main divisions of the enameller’s craft,
the painted enamel where the colours are fused on to the metal but
produce an effect similar to that of a painting executed with the brush,
the special advantage of the enamel being its lustre; and the encrusted
enamel, where the effect is more like that of mosaic. Vasari would have
thoroughly appreciated the painted enamels, known generally as enamels
of Limoges, which are complete pictures, but, though Cellini mentions
them, they originated north of the Alps and only came into general vogue
after Vasari’s time. The incrusted enamels are earlier, and of these he
only describes one particular kind that had its home specially in Italy.
The earliest known enamels, whether Western or Byzantine or Oriental in
origin, have the different colours separated in compartments divided
from each other by ridges of metal which give the lines of the design.
These so-called ‘champlevé’ and ‘cloisonné’ enamels there is no need to
discuss, but it may be noted that the pastes used in them, though highly
lustrous, are opaque, and cover completely the metal over which they are
laid. The enamel described by Vasari differs from these earlier enamels
in compartments in that the pastes are transparent, so that the ground
shows through. The divisions between the colours also are not so marked.
In this kind of work transparent vitreous pastes are fused over a metal
ground that has been chased in low relief, so that the light and shade
of the relief shows through the transparent coloured film. The work is
very delicate and on a small scale, and the ground is nearly always gold
or silver. A slight sinking is made in a plate of one of these metals
where the enamel is to come, and at the bottom of this sinking the
subject is carved or chased in very low relief, so low indeed that
Cellini compares the height of it to the thickness of two sheets of
paper (_Dell’ Oreficeria_, c. III). The transparent enamels are then
fused over the different parts of the design, the contours of the
figures or objects being just allowed to show as fine lines of metal
between the different colours.
Examples of this work are rare, but the Victoria and Albert Museum and
the British Museum have some good specimens. Transparent enamels are
used also in other ways, and are sometimes arranged in apertures (see
above) so as to show by transmitted light. Labarte’s _Histoire des Arts
Industriels_ is still indispensable as an authority on various kinds of
enamel work, though there is a whole literature on the theme.
INDEX
For buildings and permanent monuments at Florence, Rome, etc., see under
the names of the respective cities.
The references are to pages. The upright numerals refer to the text, the
sloping ones to the commentary.
Aachen, minster at, crown-light in, _275_.
Abbozza, l’, _231_.
‘Abundance,’ see ‘Donatello, Dovizia.’
‘Adoration of the Lamb,’ by van Eyck, _296_.
‘Agias,’ the, by Lysippus, _146_.
‘Alberese,’ 57.
Alberti, Leon Battista: _1_, _7_, _8_, _10_, _11_, _12_, _13_, 25, 30,
_66_:
his writings;
_De Re Aedificatoria_, _6_, _13_, _26_, _34_, _65_, _232_;
_Della Pittura_, _6_, _11_, _12_, _13_;
_Della Scultura_, _6_, _192_;
_Tract on the Orders_, _66_.
Alcamenes, his competition with Pheidias, _181_, _186_.
Aldovrandi, _104_.
Alexander VI, _260_.
Alexandria, _102_, _300_.
Alfonso of Naples, 226.
Amalgam, for niello work, 274.
Amiens, portals at, _199_.
Ammanati, 46, _125_, _139_.
Anastatius IV, _27_.
Ancona, arch at, 79.
Andrea dal Castagno, 229.
Anio, the, _51_.
Antiques, collections of, _102_ f.
Antonello da Messina, 229, _297_.
‘Apollo’;
‘Belvedere,’ _116_;
‘Choisseul Gouffier,’ _146_;
at Naples, _42_, _104_.
‘Applied ornament,’ _22_.
Arabesques, _303_.
Arch of Discharge, 70.
Arches: ancient;
at Ancona, 79;
at Pola, 79;
at Rome, _76_, 82, _132_, _184_, _197_:
temporary, 240.
Architectural forms, significance of, _68_.
Architectural practice, mediaeval and modern, _207_.
Architecture;
Gothic, 83, _132_, _133_ f.;
ideal, _18_, 96, _138_;
mediaeval, Vasari on, 83, _133_ f.;
Renaissance, _133_, _138_ f.,
books on, _72_, _74_;
Roman, see ‘Rome,’ and _passim_.
‘Architettura Tedesca,’ _134_.
_Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria_, _103_.
Armatures;
in models of clay or wax, 149, 150, _195_;
in moulds for bronze casting, 160 f., _201_;
in modelled plaster work, 171.
Aretine vases, _156_.
Arezzo, _267_, _309_;
Cathedral, _267_;
Museum, _157_;
S. Francesco, _267_;
Vasari’s house, _291_.
Armenini, _7_.
Armour, arms, inlaid, 279 f.
‘Ascension’ by Melozzo da Forlì, _217_.
Ashlar work, 50, 63.
Assisi;
S. Francesco, _134_;
Roman Temple, _75_.
Athens;
Acropolis, _300_;
Museums, _239_;
Olympeion, _132_;
Pentelicus quarries, _44_, _194_.
Bacchus, Temple of, at Rome, 27, 93.
Bacon, Francis, his _Essay on Building_, _139_.
Baldinucci;
his _Notizie_, _110_, _113_, _114_;
his _Vocabolario_, _57_, _231_.
Bandinello, 46.
Bardiglio, grey marble, _45_, _49_, _125_.
Basalt, _104_, _117_.
Bassae, sculpture from, _184_.
Bathroom pictures, _227_.
Beccafumi, Domenico, 258.
Bekleidungstheorie, Semper’s, _303_.
Bell earths, 230.
Bellini;
Gentile, _236_;
Giovanni, _297_;
Jacopo, Vasari’s Life of, _237_.
Bells, casting of, 164, _199_.
Belvedere, Cortile di, see ‘Rome, Vatican.’
Bérard, _Dictionnaire des Artistes Français_, _130_.
‘Bernward’ pillar, the, _164_.
Bertolotti, _Artisti Francesi in Roma_, etc., _130_.
Biacca (white lead), _221_, 230, 236, _288_.
‘Bianco Sangiovanni,’ _221_, _288_.
Birmingham, its School of Art, _22_.
Boccaccio, his Commentary on Dante, _35_.
Bocchi, Francesco, on Donatello, _195_.
Boetheus, _de Arithmetica_, _236_.
_Bollettino d’ Arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione_, quoted,
_233_.
Bole Armeniac, Bolus, _248_.
Bologna;
John of, _38_;
S. Domenico, _306_.
Bonanni, _Numismata_, etc., _116_.
Borghini, _7_.
Botticelli, as tempera painter, _292_, _294_.
Box wood;
for carving, 174;
for wood-cuts, 281.
Braccio, as measure of length, viii.
Bramante, _116_, _135_, _266_.
Breccia, 37, _38_, 45, 49, 57, _125_, 261.
Brenner, the, _134_.
Brick;
pounded, 232, 234;
variegated, for pavements, 260.
British Museum, _313_.
Bronze;
casting in, see ‘Sculpture, in Bronze’;
composition of, 163 f.;
incised designs in, _275_.
Brunelleschi, _25_, _46_, 58, _196_, _197_, 262, _305_.
Brussels, Town Hall at, _236_.
Buddhist stucco work, _301_.
‘Building,’ relief on Giotto’s Campanile, _207_.
_Bulletin Monumental_, _136_.
Bulls’ eyes, 265.
Buonarroti, the Casa, _46_, _195_.
Buonarroti, Michelangelo, personal references to, _5_, _15_, _25_, 33,
108.
Buonarroti, his work;
at Florence, _46_, 80, _110_;
at the marble quarries, 120 f.;
at Rome, _14_, 36, 53, 81, _116_, 153;
as architect, 53 f., 80 f.;
as decorative designer, _53_, 81, _116_;
as draughtsman, 216;
as restorer of antiques, 32, _116_;
as sculptor, _90_, _153_, _192_, _194_, _195_, _199_;
as writer, _179_, _180_, _197_.
Buontalenti, _90_.
Burgkmair, _282_.
‘Burin,’ or graver, 165, 273.
Burlington;
House, see ‘Exhibitions’;
_Magazine_, _227_.
Burnishing of gold, 249.
Busts, Roman, in coloured wax, _188_.
Byzantine;
mosaics, _136_;
mural paintings, _225_;
temperas, 223;
misuse of the word, _302_.
‘Calcagnuolo’ (toothed chisel), 48, 152.
Camaldoli, monastery of, _233_.
Cameos, 157, 169.
‘Campanini,’ marbles, 45, 50.
Campiglia, 50, _127_.
Cancellieri, _Lettera ... intorno la ... Tazza_, _109_.
Cannon, casting of, 164, _200_.
Canopy, in the Carmine, Florence, 43, _118_.
Cantini, _Legislazione Toscana_, _58_.
Canvas;
as painting ground, 236 f.;
mural painting on, _234_;
as used in Egypt, _236_;
at Rome, _236_;
at Venice, _236_ f.;
by Mantegna, _236_;
by Netherland painters, _236_.
Carborundum, _29_.
Careggi, _33_.
Carfagnana, or Garfagnana, a district of Italy, _45_.
Carpi, Ugo da, 281.
Carrara, 42, _119_ f., 259.
_Carteggio_, the, of Gaye, _16_, _32_, _266_, _308_ f.
Cartoons;
how made, 213;
how used, 215 f., 259, _289_;
for glass, 268.
Castagno, Andrea dal, 229.
Casting-pit, the, 163.
Cellini, Benvenuto; _7_, _45_, _116_, _160_, _164_, _199_ f.;
his _Autobiography_, _116_, _302_;
his _Trattati_, _7_, _18_, _41_, _57_, _111_, _113_, _168_, _191_,
_275_, _276_, _277_, _278_;
on the use of full-sized models, _194_;
his process of bronze casting, _201_.
Cennini, Cennino, _9_, _10_, _11_, _88_;
his _Trattato_, _6_, _8_, _11_, _136_ f., _173_, _224_, _237_, _290_,
_292_, _295_.
Cesare Cesariano, _134_ f.
Chalk;
black, 213;
red, 212;
tailors’ white, 231;
as ‘whitening,’ _242_.
Chambers, Sir William, _68_.
Charcoal;
for darkening mixtures, 240;
for drawing, 213, 231;
for transferring, 215.
Charles V, _108_.
Chartres, sculpture at, _183_.
Chasing; _200_, 273;
tools for, 165.
Chavenier (Chiavier), Jean, of Rouen, _130_, _175_.
Chemical analysis of painting media, _225_.
Chiaroscuri;
decorative paintings, 240 f., _298_;
wood engravings, _20_, 281 f.
Choir stalls, _305_.
Christ;
by Donatello at Padua, _188_;
‘At the pillar’ by del Piombo, _234_;
Head of, by Tadda, 33, _113_, _115_.
Christa, Christus (the painter), see ‘Crista.’
‘Chunam,’ _301_.
‘Church Triumphant,’ the, at Reims, _184_.
Cicero, _de Divinatione_, _180_.
Cimabue, 223, _252_.
‘Cipollaccio,’ 36.
Cipollino, _36_, 45, 49.
‘Cire Perdue,’ _202_.
Cista, Ficeronian, the, _273_.
Cividale, S. Maria in Valle, _301_.
Claude (worker in glass), _266_.
Clement;
VII, 36, _46_, 58, 89, _109_, _110_, _116_, 311;
XI, _108_;
XII, _28_;
XIV, _108_.
‘Cleopatra,’ the, _116_.
Coats of Arms, see ‘Stemmi.’
Coins, technique of, 157, 168.
‘Colantonio del Fiore’ (apocryphal artist), _227_.
Colonna;
Ascanio, 32, _108_;
Vittoria, _108_.
Colouring; 218 f.;
Florentine, North Italian, _208_;
in three shades, 209;
printing in, _281_;
of woods for tarsia, 262;
of wax, 148, _188_ f.
Columns: see ‘Orders of Architecture’:
at Constantinople, _102_:
at Florence;
Baptistry, 34;
Mercato Vecchio, 59;
S. Trinità, _41_, _66_, _110_:
at Pisa, Baptistry, _41_:
at Rome;
Aurelian, _183_ f.;
Basilica of Constantine, _79_;
Pantheon, 41;
St. Peter’s, 39;
Trajanic, _183_ f.:
rustication of, _65_.
‘Commesso, lavoro di,’ 262.
Composition, in a picture, its meaning, 209.
Conche (antique bathing urns used for sepulchral purposes or
fountains), _27_, _38_, _39_, _108_ f.
Conglomerate, see ‘Breccia.’
Coningsburgh Castle, _72_.
Constantine, 27, _102_.
Constantinople;
porphyry at, _101_;
S. Sophia, _102_, _254_.
Correggio, _208_, _217_.
Corsi, _delle Pietre antiche_, _37_, _41_, _49_.
Cortona, _156_, _267_.
Corundum (emery), _29_.
Cosimo, see ‘Medici, dei.’
Cosmati-work, _304_.
Cranach, _282_.
Crista, Pietro, 228.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle; _Early Flemish Painters_, _227_;
_History of Painting in North Italy_, _226_.
Dalman, Dalmau, Ludovicus, _228_.
Damascening, 279.
Damiano, Fra, of Bergamo, 263, _306_.
Dante; _307_;
quoted, _258_ f.;
referred to, _35_.
Danti, Vincenzio, _123_.
Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités_, _273_.
Davanzati, on Donatello, _181_.
‘David,’ the, by Michelangelo, _44_, 45, _194_.
De l’Orme, _139_.
De Mayerne MS., _297_.
Design;
how it should be studied, 210;
as basis of the decorative arts, 284.
Dienecker, _282_.
Dierich, Dirick;
Bouts, _228_;
of Haarlem, _228_.
‘Disegno,’ Vasari’s use of the term, _205_.
Dissection, value of, 210.
Djebel Duchan, porphyry quarries, _102_.
Dome of St. Peter’s, _81_.
Donatello: personal references, _12_, _197_, _199_:
his treatment of relief, _18_, 145, 156:
his treatment of the proportions of the figure, _181_ f.:
his works; ‘Abraham and Isaac,’ _182_,
‘Beheading of John Baptist,’ _196_,
‘Cantoria,’ _182_,
‘Christ’ of S. Antonio, Padua, _188_,
‘David,’ _188_,
‘Dovizia,’ _57_, 59,
‘St. George,’ _45_, _195_,
‘Niccolo da Uzzano,’ _188_,
‘Pietà,’ _156_,
‘Zuccone,’ _182_.
‘Doryphorus,’ the, at Naples, _146_.
‘Dovizia,’ by Donatello, _57_, _59_.
Drapery, its treatment in sculpture, _144_, 150, 175.
Drawing;
its use in the various arts, 206 f.;
materials of, 212.
Drawings, Florentine and Venetian, _212_.
Drills, 49.
Duccio of Siena, 258.
Dürer, Albrecht; _1_;
as tempera painter, _292_.
Dussieux, _Artistes Français à l’Étranger_, _130_.
Egg, as a tempera, 222, _223_, 224, 234, 249, _293_.
Egg-shell mosaic, 93, _136_ f.
Egypt, as source of supply for stones, 26, 36, 38, 39, 40, _41_, 42,
_101_, _111_.
Egyptians;
their bronze casting, 163;
their painting methods, _224_;
their silver work, _273_;
their use of wooden stamps for bricks, _275_.
Elba, granite from, 40, _111_.
‘Electron’ metal, 164.
Elsa, river of Tuscany, 88.
Emery; 27 f.;
point for cutting glass, 269;
veins (smerigli), 47.
Enamels;
different kinds of, _312_ f.;
vitreous pastes for, _311_;
effect of tin in, _277_, _311_;
Cellini on, _276_ f.;
Labarte on, _313_;
Theophilus on, _276_, _312_;
over reliefs, 276 f.;
over different metals, 277;
firing of, 278;
fluxes for, _277_;
polishing of, 278;
ruby colour in, _277_;
Venetian, _278_.
Encaustic painting, _190_, _292_.
_Encyclopédie_, the French, _18_, _152_, _158_, _191_.
Engraving, on metal, 273 f.;
on wood, 281 f.
Etruscan;
incised designs, _273_:
reliefs, _197_;
see also ‘Orders of Architecture, Tuscan’ and ‘Tuscan style.’
Eugenius IV, _28_.
Eustatius, _181_.
_Evonimus Europaeus_, see ‘Silio.’
Exhibitions;
at Burlington House, _227_, _293_;
at the Salon, _293_;
International, of 1851, _21_;
of 1862, _41_, _55_, _60_, _119_;
‘Toison d’Or,’ at Bruges, _227_.
Eyck, van; _10_, _19_, _294_ f.;
Hubert, _226_;
Jan, 226 f., _230_,
bath room pictures by, 227.
Ezechiel, his visionary temple, _139_.
Facio, _De Viris Illustribus_, _227_, _296_.
Falda, G. F., _Vedute delle Fabbriche_, _28_.
Farnese Collection of Antiques, 28, _104_.
Federico of Urbino, 227.
Ferrara;
as an artistic centre, _227_;
Palazzo dei Diamanti, _132_.
Fichard, _Frankfurtisches Archiv_, _106_.
Ficorini, Francesco dei, _Le Vestigia_, etc., _108_.
Fiesole; _57_, 58, _60_, _132_;
S. Girolamo, tomb in, _111_.
Fig tree, milk of, as a tempera, 224.
Filarete, _Trattato_, _135_, _139_ f., _146_, _296_.
‘Filiera’ (wire-drawing plate), _280_.
Fineschi, on S. Maria Novella, _30_.
Finiguerra, Maso, 274, _275_.
Fireplaces, mediaeval, _72_.
Firing;
of enamels, 278;
of glass, 271;
of _cire perdue_ moulds, 162 f.
‘Flashing,’ in glass staining, _270_.
Flemings, as glass workers, 267, _309_.
Flemish;
correspondents of Vasari, _1_;
painting, 226 f., _236_.
Florence:
Baptistry; 34, _252_, 274;
gates of, _34_, 155, _183_, _196_:
Bargello, see ‘Museum, National’:
Boboli Gardens, _29_, _38_, _39_, _41_, _90_, _107_:
Borgo degli Albizzi, _298_:
Campanile;
materials of, _118_, _128_;
relief on, _207_;
statues on, _182_, _187_:
‘Centro,’ the, _60_:
Churches;
Annunziata, _18_, 175, 253;
Carmine, 42, _118_;
Cathedral, see ‘Duomo’;
Duomo, 43, 61, _112_, _118_, _128_, _253_, _306_, _308_;
S. Giovanni, see ‘Baptistry’;
S. Lorenzo, 58, _112_, _122_, 156, (Cappella dei Principi, _59_,
Façade, 46, _124_, Library, 58, 80, _81_, 261, _310_, Sacristy,
58, 80, _110_, _194_, _305_);
S. Maria del Fiore, see ‘Duomo’;
S. Maria Novella, 30;
S. Maria Nuova, 228, 229;
Or San Michele, 60, 61;
S. Miniato a Monte, _28_, 43, _118_;
S. Spirito, 58:
Citadel, fortress, see ‘Fortezza’:
Fortezza;
Belvedere, _66_;
da Basso, 61, 66, _133_:
Fountains, 32, _38_, 46, 88, _90_, _113_:
Loggia dei Lanzi, 61:
Manufactory of Mosaics, _109_, _118_:
Mercato;
Nuovo, 59;
Vecchio, 59:
Museum;
of S. Marco, _60_;
National, _113_, _136_, _274_:
Opera del Duomo, _136_, _182_, _307_:
Palazzo;
Alessandri, _132_;
Medici, 68, _133_;
Montalvo, _298_;
Pitti, 42, _60_, 61, _66_, 68, _109_, _114_, _133_;
Riccardi, _133_;
Strozzi, 61, 68;
Vecchio (dei Signori, Ducal, Duke Cosimo’s, etc.), _3_, _15_, _19_,
_33_, 45, 61, _113_, _132_, 233, _306_, _307_:
Piazza;
S. Trinità, _66_, _110_;
Vittorio Emanuele, _59_:
Ponte S. Trinità, _46_, _139_:
Strada dei Magistrati, see ‘Uffizi’:
Uffizi, _5_, _59_, 70 f., _106_, _112_, _113_, _136_:
Via dei Magistrati, see ‘Uffizi.’
Flour;
baked, mixed with clay to keep it moist, 150;
in paste for priming canvas, _236_;
for mucilage, 213.
Fluxes, for enamels, _277_.
Foggini, Giov. Batt., _60_.
Fontainebleau, stucco work at, _171_, _183_, _302_.
Foreshortening;
in painting, 216 f.;
in sculpture, 145.
Fornarina, Raphael’s, her reputed house, _103_.
Fountains, 32, 36, _38_, _40_, 46, 87 f., _110_, _113_, _116_.
François I of France, _130_, _171_.
‘Frassinella’ (sharpening stone), 278.
Frederick II, Emperor, _112_.
French School at Rome, _53_.
French, the, as glass workers, 267.
Fresco painting, see ‘Painting, fresco.’
Gaddi;
Agnolo, _10_, _137_;
Gaddo, _136_;
Taddeo, _10_.
Galluzzi, _History of the Grand Dukes_, _15_, _112_.
‘Ganymede,’ the Florentine, _106_.
Garfagnana or Carfagnana;
a district of Italy, _45_.
Garnier, M., on Michelangelo, _81_.
Gaye, _Carteggio_, _16_, _32_, _266_, _308_ f.
_Gazette des Beaux Arts_, referred to, _81_.
Genoa;
Doria Palace, _247_;
its flagstones or slates, 55, 238.
German carving in hard materials, 174.
‘German work,’ 63, 83, _133_ f.
Germans, the, in connection with engraving, _275_, _282_.
Gesso;
as painting ground, 223 f., 230, 236, _249_, _293_;
reliefs in, _224_.
Ghiberti, _18_, _183_, _199_.
Gian, Maestro, 52, _128_ f., _175_.
_Giornale d’ Italia_, _130_.
Giotto, _10_, 225, _290_, _304_.
Giovanni, Fra, of Verona, 262, _305_.
Girardon, his statue of Louis XIV, _18_, _158_.
Giulio, a silver coin, 276.
Giusto, S., near Florence, 37.
Glass;
‘crown,’ _265_;
stained, 265 f., _308_ f.;
Venetian, 268;
see also ‘Mosaic.’
Glue;
from cheese, 173;
from parchment shreds, 173;
see also ‘Size.’
Gori, _Thesaurus Vet. Diptychorum_, _136_.
Gossets, the, workers in wax, _189_.
Gothic Art, _16_, _17_, _60_, 83, _133_ f., _184_.
Goths, the, 60, 63, 83, _134_.
Gotti, Aurelio;
on the length of the ‘braccio,’ viii;
_Le Gallerie ... di Firenze_, _113_.
Gozbert of Tegernsee, _310_.
‘Gradina’ (toothed chisel), 48, 152.
Granite, 39 f.
Granito;
del foro, _41_;
di Prato, _118_.
Greece, as source of supply for stones, _35_, 36, 38, 42, 43.
Greek;
bronzes, _164_;
incised designs, _273_;
reliefs, _179_, _196_ f.;
statues, _146_;
technique of marble sculpture, _192_;
technique of bronze casting, _202_;
tempera paintings, see ‘Byzantine’;
wood inlays, _304_.
Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, _102_ f.
Gregory XII, _227_.
‘Grisatoio’ (a tool), 269.
Grotesques; 244 f., _299_ f.;
meaning of term, _302_.
Grottoes, 87, _302_.
‘Grozing iron’ (a tool), 269.
Guasti, edition of Michelangelo’s poems, _180_.
Guglielmo da Marcilla, 266, _268_, _311_.
Guicciardini, on early Flemish painters, _226_.
Gum, as a tempera, 222, _223_, 250, 267, 283.
Haematite, 269.
Hair, the, its treatment in sculpture, _144_.
Hampton Court, _236_.
Hare, _Days near Rome_, _88_.
‘Heads,’ as measures of columns, 65.
Heemskerck, drawing of Michelangelo’s fountain, _116_.
Helena, mother of Constantine, _27_.
_Hermeneia_ (Mount Athos Handbook), _295_.
‘Hermes,’ the, of Praxiteles, _44_.
Herrmann, _Steinbruchindustrie_, _49_.
Hildesheim;
bronze doors at, _164_;
St. Michael’s, _302_.
‘Historic Ornament,’ _22_.
Honey, as a tempera, _223_, 250.
Hugo of Antwerp (van der Goes), 229.
Humanism, _11_, _25_, _138_ f.
Ideal Architecture, _18_, 96, _138_.
Ilg, Dr Albert, _6_, _92_.
Impruneta, Hill of the, 37, _127_.
Industrial Arts, the; _21_;
in Britain, _22_;
in France, _21_;
in Italy, _passim_.
Inlays:
breccia, 38:
marble, 92 f., 258 f.:
metal;
damascening, 279 f.;
niello, 273 f.:
rustic, for fountains and grottoes, 87 f.:
of coloured stones for pavements, etc., 57, 91:
wood, 262 f., _303_ f.
Intaglios, technique of, 168 f.
Intarsia, _279_;
see also ‘Tarsia.’
Iron;
armatures, ties, etc., 25, 74, 161 f., 271;
see also ‘Armatures’;
damascening in, 279 f.;
scale or scum of, 234, 269.
Istrian Stone, 56.
_Jahrbuch d. k. deutschen Archeologischen Instituts_, _104_, _105_,
_107_, _115_.
Janni, Maestro, _128_, 174.
Jervis, _I Tesori Sotterranei dell’ Italia_, _41_, _119_ f.
Joggled lintels, _72_.
John of Bruges, see ‘Eyck, van, Jan.’
‘Jonah,’ by Michelangelo, _216_.
Julius;
II, _108_, _260_, _266_, _267_, _276_, _308_;
III, 32, _108_.
‘Justice,’ statue by Francesco del Tadda, _110_.
Justus of Ghent, 229.
Labarte, _Histoire des Arts Industriels_, _258_, _276_, _313_.
‘Lacedaemonium viride,’ _35_.
‘Laocoon,’ the, _116_.
‘Last Supper’;
Leonardo’s, _233_;
in Flemish glass, _311_.
Lavagna, slates of, 55.
Laws, against use of particular materials, etc., 58.
Leads, for glass windows, 271.
Leo;
III, 310;
X, _15_, _44_, _46_, _106_, _122_, _260_.
Leonardo da Vinci, _12_, _14_, _15_, _139_, 230, _233_.
Leopardi, Alessandro, _199_.
_Liber Pontificalis_, _310_.
Libergier, Hughes, of Reims, _207_.
Light and shade, treatment of, 220.
Lime;
from marble chips, 86;
from travertine, 86, _221_;
its behaviour in connection with fresco, _288_.
Lime-white, see ‘Bianco Sangiovanni.’
Limewood, for carving, 173.
Linen cloth, over panels, 224.
Linlithgow Palace, _72_.
Lippmann, _The Art of Wood Engraving_, _281_.
Lomazzo, _231_.
Lorenzetto, the sculptor, _107_.
Lotto, _208_.
Louis:
XIV, age of, 21;
statue of, _158_:
XV, style of, _89_.
Louvre, the, _44_, _107_, _116_, _194_, _201_.
‘Luano, Ludovico da’ (apocryphal painter), 228.
Lübeck, _308_.
Luini, _290_.
Luni, _119_.
Lysistratus, _188_.
Maccari, _Graffiti e Chiaroscuri_, _298_.
‘Macigno,’ 57.
Majano;
Benedetto da, 262, _306_;
Giuliano da, _306_.
Manganese, its use in fluxes, _277_.
‘Manner,’ its meaning in sculpture, _144_.
Mantegna, _236_;
as tempera painter, _292_.
Manufactory of Mosaics, Tuscan, _109_, _118_.
_Manufacture des Meubles de la Couronne_, _21_.
Marangoni, _Delle Cose Gentilesche_, _28_.
Marble;
coloured, _153_;
Italian, ch. I _passim_, _117_ f., 152, 259;
for mosaic, 91 f., 258;
Parian, Pentelic, _44_;
polish of, 49, 152, _153_;
transparent, 43, 265.
Marcilla, Guglielmo da, 266, _267_, _268_, _311_.
Maremma, the Tuscan, its quarries, _128_.
Mariotti, _Legislazione delle Belle Arti_, _59_, _61_.
Marqueterie, _264_.
Martin, painters named, _229_.
‘Mary of the Visitation,’ Reims, _184_.
Massa, its quarries, _126_.
Massi, _Museo Pio-Clementino_, _27_, _108_.
Medals, technique of, 167 f.
Mediaeval;
sculpture, _144_;
decorative art, _284_;
see also ‘Gothic.’
Medici;
arms of the, _61_, 67;
porphyry portraits of the, 33, _113_ f.;
tombs of the, _194_.
Medici, dei:
Alessandro, 66:
Cosimo (_Pater Patriae_), 33, _113_ f.:
Cosimo I, Duke;
personal references, _14_, _15_, 32, 33, 47, 70, _110_, _112_, 228;
portrait in porphyry, 33, _113_;
connection with the marble quarries, _120_, _124_, 261;
his interest in Pisa, 50, _126_;
works connected with his name at Florence, (Palazzo Vecchio), 32,
_33_, 37;
(Pitti), 38, 41;
(Uffizi), 59, 70;
(elsewhere), 59, 88:
Ferdinando, 105:
Francesco, _33_, 123:
Giovanni, _112_:
Giuliano, _15_:
Giulio (Clement VII), _15_:
Ippolito, _103_:
Leonora, Duchess, 33:
Lorenzo;
the Magnificent, 227;
Duca d’ Urbino, _15_:
Piero, _112_.
_Mélanges Nicole_, _194_.
Melozzo da Forlì, _217_.
Memling, Hans, _227_.
‘Meridiana,’ in the Pitti, _114_.
Merrifield, Mrs, _3_, _6_.
Michelagnolo, Michelangelo, see ‘Buonarroti.’
Michelozzo, _199_.
Milan;
S. Ambrogio, _302_;
Cathedral, _135_.
Millar, _Plastering_, _150_.
Mischiato, Mischio, see ‘Breccia.’
_Mitteilungen d. k. deutschen Archeologischen Instituts_, _78_.
Modelling in clay, 149 f., _198_.
Models:
for sculpture;
full-sized, 150 f., 158, _190_, _192_ f., _194_, _202_;
small, 148, _194_:
for wood carving, 173:
of wood for architecture, 207:
for studying shadows, 214, 216.
Monochromes, see ‘Chiaroscuri.’
Monsummano, quarries of, _128_.
Monte, monti;
Albano, _128_;
Altissimo, _120_ f.;
Ceceri, _57_;
Ferrato, _127_;
S. Giuliano, 50, _126_;
Martiri, _37_;
Morello, 88;
Pisani, 50, _126_;
Rantoli, 37;
Ripaldi, _60_;
Sagro, _120_;
Spertoli, _242_.
_Monumenti del Istituto_, _76_.
Morris, William, _3_, _22_.
Morto da Feltro, _302_.
Mosaic;
antique, 91 f., _93_, 257, 263;
derivation of word, _91_;
Early Christian, _27_, _252_ f.;
egg-shell, 93, _136_;
glass, 93, 251;
marble, 37, 92 f., 258 f.;
pictorial, for walls, 93, 251 f.;
rustic, for fountains and grottoes, 89, 90;
technique of, 253 f.;
Tuscan manufactory of, _109_, _118_;
for variegated pavements (Cosmati-work), 91, _304_;
vitreous pastes for, _311_ f.;
of window glass, 266, _309_;
wood, 262 f., _303_ f.
Mosque;
lamps from, _268_;
windows in, _309_.
Mother of Pearl, _93_.
Mothes, _Baukunst ... in Italien_, _135_.
Moulds, plaster, from the life, _188_.
Mucilage, see ‘Glue.’
‘Muffle’ furnace, 271, 277.
Müntz, Eugène;
_Les Arts à la Cour des Papes_, _130_;
on Byzantine mosaics, _136_.
Mural decoration:
decorative processes, _19_, 240 f., _287_ f.:
fresco, _10_, 213 f., 221 f., _287_ f.:
mosaic, 93, 251 f.:
oil, 232 f., _236_, 237, _294_ f.;
on stone, 239:
stucco, 53, 170 f., 244 f., _299_ f.:
sgraffito, 243, _298_ f.:
tempera, 224, _291_ f.
Naples:
Museum, antiques at, _43_, _104_;
pictures at, _227_:
S. Barbara, _226_:
S. Giacomo, tomb in, _47_:
Vasari’s paintings at, _233_.
Nature, study of, at the Renaissance, _12_, _14_.
Net, the, for enlarging, 214.
Niello, 273 f.
Niké, from Samothrace, _107_.
‘Nile,’ Statue of the, 36, 44, _116_.
Nola, Giovanni da, 47.
‘Nonsuch,’ Palace of, stuccoes at, _302_.
Nose, the, in Greek and Florentine sculpture, _45_.
‘Nymph of Fontainebleau,’ Cellini’s, _201_.