The expression is a little awkward, but the meaning evidently is that

the pedestal is half as high again as it is wide. There is some doubt

whether the clause ‘then above are placed’ to ‘as Vitruvius directs’

refers to the pedestal or the column itself. In the case of all the

other Orders Vasari mentions the upper and lower mouldings of the

pedestal, and it would be most natural to imagine him doing so here,

but the ‘torus and two fillets (bastone e due piani) as Vitruvius

directs’ sounds more like the ‘Attic’ base of the column, and the

reference to Vitruvius should be conclusive that it is _not_ the

pedestal of which there is question, for the good reason that

Vitruvius knows nothing of the pedestal under the single column of any

of the Orders. Such a feature does occur in classical work, as in the

temple at Assisi, but it is not a normal classical form, and

architectural purists in modern times reject it. Vitruvius is however

again referred to by Vasari in this connection, in § 25, and Giorgio

may have in his mind the sentence in Vitruvius, III, iv, 5, in which

there is a reference to the mouldings on the continuous podium that

serves as the substructure of the Roman temple, and forms one

difference between it and the Greek temple. The single pedestal was

often used in Renaissance work, and Vasari regards it as a matter of

course.

Footnote 122:

The metopes; these are always set back a little behind the face of the

triglyphs, which are here termed the projections. The metope offers a

suitable field for carved ornaments.

Footnote 123:

Vasari merely has in mind the familiar difference in form between the

Doric and Ionic flutes, the former being much shallower than the

latter, and not showing the plain strip or fillet which in the Ionic

column comes between every two of the flutes.

Footnote 124:

The reference probably is to the portion of the ancient Basilica

Aemilia, which in Vasari’s time still stood erect where recent

excavations have revealed the plan and part of the architectural

members of this famous structure. We must bear in mind that what

Vasari and his contemporaries called the ‘Forum Boarium’ was not the

part between the Capitol and the Palatine, near the ‘Bocca della

Verità’ which was the ancient Cattle Market and now has resumed its

antique name, but the Forum proper, which used even in the memory of

those now living to be called ‘Campo Vaccino.’ It seems to have

derived the name ‘Forum Boarium’ from this very fragment of the

Basilica Aemilia which Vasari has in his mind in this passage. The

fragment was figured by Giuliano da San Gallo in a drawing in the

Barberini Library, which is reproduced in _Monumenti dell’ Istituto_,

XII, T. 11, 12, and from this, by the kind permission of the Imperial

German Archaeological Institute, has been taken Fig. 6. The

destruction of this most interesting fragment, which stood over

against the arch of Septimius Severus, is one of the many almost

inconceivable acts of vandalism of which the men of the later

Renaissance period were guilty. The richness of which Vasari speaks

can be seen in the illustration.

Footnote 125:

Here again Renaissance and modern topographical nomenclature do not

agree. What Vasari knew as the ‘Tullianum’ was not the familiar

‘Carcer Mamertinus’ above the Forum on the way up to S. Maria in

Araceli, but certain antique structures under the church of S. Nicola

in Carcere, near the Piazza Montanara. These were the ‘favissae’ or

cells within the structure of the podium or platform of one of several

ancient Roman temples on this site, which was formerly the ‘Forum

Olitorium.’ These substructures are now accessible, and the worthy

sacristan of the church who shows them is still of opinion that he has

in charge the prison of the Tullianum. One of the travertine columns

of one of these temples is to be seen within the church, and this

though Doric is extremely simple, even rude, in its outline. Dr

Huelsen has however in a recent paper (_Mitteilungen d. k. deutschen

Archaeologischen Instituts_, XXI, 169 f.) shown that this column was

originally finished with stucco, in which somewhat elaborate mouldings

were worked. It was drawn by several of the Renaissance architects,

and Peruzzi notes it as being ‘in carcere Tulliano.’ Huelsen has drawn

out a scheme of the mouldings in profile and this is reproduced by

permission in Fig. 7. It will be seen that Vasari’s remark about its

richness in membering is quite justified.

Footnote 126:

Vasari probably refers to the great Corinthian column which was still

to be seen in his time in the interior of the Basilica of Constantine

(formerly called the Temple of Peace). The column was placed early in

the seventeenth century in the Piazza in front of S. Maria Maggiore,

where it is still in evidence.

Footnote 127:

‘Largo’ is the word in the text, but it must be merely a clerical

error for ‘alto.’

Footnote 128:

See Note 14, ante, p. 75.

Footnote 129:

See Note 86, ante, p. 53.

Footnote 130:

On Michelangelo’s use of architectural details M. Garnier had some

rather severe remarks in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_ for Jan. 1,

1876. He denied to him an understanding of the grammar of the use of

such forms. It is generally admitted that for the details of the

Farnese cornice, the fittings and decoration of the Library of S.

Lorenzo, and other such works to which his name attaches, he was

indebted to professional architects, such as Vignola, whom he

employed. We must never forget however that we owe to Michelangelo the

dome of St. Peter’s, one of the greatest architectural creations of

its kind in the world. In mentioning the ‘siti storti’ (sites that

were irregular or out of the straight), Vasari probably had in view

the design for laying out the Capitol, which is another of

Michelangelo’s acknowledged successes. Here the existing Palazzo dei

Conservatori stood somewhat askew and the site was regularized to

correspond with the line of its façade. All this about Michelangelo

was added for the second edition, after Vasari had himself worked at

his master’s staircase at S. Lorenzo.

Footnote 131:

See Note on ‘Vasari’s Opinion on Mediaeval Architecture’ at the close

of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 133 f. The phrase

‘this manner was the invention of the Goths,’ etc., is historically

important as the first introduction into literature of the familiar

architectural term ‘Gothic.’

Footnote 132:

Vasari makes no provision for binding together the vault in stucco and

that in brick. Each is apparently independent of the other, though

they are in contact, and no keys are formed in the upper surface of

the stucco for the purpose of tieing it to the brickwork above.

Footnote 133:

This same subject is treated in the sixth chapter of the

‘Introduction’ to Sculpture and the thirteenth of that to Painting. In

connection with it see Note on ‘Stucco Grotesques’ at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 299.

Footnote 134:

The ‘Tuscan work’ referred to here is the same thing as the ‘lavoro

chiamato rustico’ of which Vasari writes at the beginning of the third

chapter (§ 20). The so-called Tuscan Order was the simplest and

heaviest of all, and so most suited for work that partook of the rough

and unpolished character of natural rock. For the same reason, as was

seen above, ante, p. 65, the Tuscan Order lends itself best to

association with bossy or ‘rusticated’ masonry.

Footnote 135:

Piè di Lupo. This is clearly a mistake for Piè di Lugo, for at the

lake of that name above the great Cascade of Terni, there are

appearances corresponding exactly with what Vasari says. It is

remarked in Hare’s _Days near Rome_, II, p. 141, that the waters of

the Vellino, which makes the fall, are ‘so strongly impregnated with

carbonate of lime, that they constantly tend to form a deposit of

travertine, and so to block up their own channel.’

Footnote 136:

The Elsa flows from the Apennines by Colle and Castelfiorentino to

join the Arno by S. Miniato, halfway between Florence and Pisa. The

valley was the birthplace of Cennino Cennini, the author of the

_Trattato_.

Footnote 137:

Monte Morello, 3065 ft., is the conspicuous height to the north of

Florence, which serves the populace for a weather-glass.

‘Quando Monte Morello

Ha il cappello

Prendi l’ombrello.’

Footnote 138:

A few miles to the north west of Florence.

Footnote 139:

These fanciful conceits have a significance for the history of

ornament which they hardly seem to deserve. Artificial grottoes of the

kind Vasari describes were very popular in the France of the

eighteenth century, and pleased the taste of the sophisticated society

of the time with an artificial ‘nature,’ that corresponded to the

affected pastoral style in literature. From the shell and stalactite

decoration of these grottoes was evolved the ornamental style

characteristic of the age of Louis XV, the shell-like forms of which

betray its origin. The name commonly given to this ornament, that

consists in little but a graceful play of curved forms, is ‘rococo,’

and this word is connected with ‘rocaille,’ a regular French term for

fantastic grotto-work of the kind here under notice.

Footnote 140:

The well-known ‘Villa Madama.’

Footnote 141:

One of the best existing examples of these ‘rustic’ grottoes and

fountains is that constructed by Buontalenti in the Boboli Gardens

near the eastern entrance. As part of its decoration there are built

in four marble figures, supposed to have been sketched out by

Michelangelo for the tomb of Julius. A view of the interior of this

grotto is given on Plate IV. The statue in the corner is one of the

four noticed above, while a little above it and to the left is one of

the grotesque figures incrusted with odds and ends, which Vasari

praises as so fascinating.

Footnote 142:

The ultimate derivation of the word ‘mosaic’ is a difficult problem.

Its immediate parent is the late-Latin ‘musivum’ which is generally

connected with the Greek μουσεῖον, meaning a ‘place of the Muses.’

With this significance, the Greek word in its Latinized form ‘museum’

is suitably applied to collections of works of art and similar objects

of aesthetic interest and value. A ‘place of the Muses’ may however be

of a different kind. The Muses, like other nymphs, were worshipped in

grottoes as guardian genii of fountains, and Pliny, _Hist. Nat._,

XXXVI, 21, writes of ‘erosa saxa in aedificiis, quae musaea vocant,

dependentia ad imaginem specus arte reddendam,’ where the suggestion

is of a rustic grotto like that in the Boboli Gardens. Such grottoes,

natural or artificial, might fittingly be decked with shells and

coloured stones and any bright inlay that offered itself. If

incrustations of the kind we call mosaic were actually met with in

these haunts of the Muses, the work might readily be called by a name

suggestive of these same nymphs, and this might be applied later on to

tesselated work in general. There is however no proof, either in Pliny

or elsewhere, that what we call mosaic was actually so used, and it

has been questioned by more than one authority whether there is really

any connection between the word ‘mosaic,’ in its various forms, and

the Muses. An oriental derivation has even been suggested for the

term.

Dr Albert Ilg, in an exceedingly learned paper on the subject in the

_Wiener Quellenschriften_, Neue Folge, V, 158 f., offered an entirely

new explanation of the word ‘mosaic,’ which he maintained had in its

original sense nothing to do with inlaid work at all, but rather with

gilding. He connected it with a root ‘mus’ or ‘mos,’ with a sense of

‘beating’ or ‘grinding,’ and instanced the mediaeval Latin term

‘mosnerium,’ which Ducange notices as equivalent to ‘molendinum,’

‘mill.’ ‘Musivum opus’ would refer on this view to the gilding process

in which the gold is ground to powder or beaten out; and Ilg affirmed

‘Musaicum im alten Sinne kann nur eigentlich Vergoldung, nicht das

moderne Mosaik, bezeichnen.’ If the word at first meant ‘gilded work’

it would later on be extended to what we know as ‘mosaic,’ because of

the use in mediaeval mosaics of the familiar gold background. The

argument of Dr Ilg is not convincing, and the question must be

considered still open. Theophilus, for example, Lib. II, c. 12, uses

‘musivum opus’ for inlaid work in which there is no question of gold.

Footnote 143:

Possibly what we call ‘mother of pearl.’

Footnote 144:

See Note on ‘The Sassi, della Valle, and other Collections,’ etc.,

postea, p. 102 f. The mosaic here noticed is unfortunately lost.

Lanciani, _The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome_, 1906, p. 234,

states that he has searched for it in vain.

Footnote 145:

See Note 5, ante, p. 27.

Footnote 146:

Mosaics made up of small cubes of coloured or gilded glass are

abundant in early Christian and Byzantine times, but were also used,

though sparingly, by the Romans from the time of Augustus downwards.

See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XXXVI, 189, who fixes the time of their

introduction.

Footnote 147:

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

Footnote 148:

See Chapters XV and XVI of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting. The

pavement of the cathedral of Siena exhibits a large collection of such

mosaics in black and white executed in different technical processes.

Footnote 149:

See Note on ‘Ideal Architecture’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to

Architecture, postea, p. 138.

Footnote 150:

That is, about 4½ inches.

Footnote 151:

About 15½ inches.

Footnote 152:

See note on ‘The Nature of Sculpture,’ at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 179.

Footnote 153:

‘Working from manner.’ Vasari refers here to what artists call

‘treatment,’ which is a process of analysis and grouping, applied to

appearances in nature where the eye sees at first little more than a

confused medley of similar forms that are perhaps constantly changing.

Under such an aspect the hair as well as the folds of drapery on the

human figure presented themselves to the early Greek sculptor, and it

was a long time before he learned to handle them aright. In the case

of the hair he had no help in previous work, for in Egyptian statues

it is often covered, or is replaced by a formal wig, and in Assyrian

art the hair is very severely though finely conventionalized. It was

not until the age of Pheidias that the Greeks learned how to suggest

the soft and ample masses of the hair, and at the same time to

subdivide these into the distinct curls or tresses, each one ‘solid,’

as Vasari requires, but individually rendered with the minuter

markings which suggest the structure and ‘feel’ of the material. The

Italians started of course with this treatment or ‘manner’ already an

established tradition founded on antique practice. In the mediaeval

sculpture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in France and

England the hair is often very artistically rendered.

Footnote 154:

This paragraph opens up a subject of much artistic interest, on which

see Note on ‘Sculpture Treated for Position,’ at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 180 f.

Footnote 155:

For Vasari, a practical artist, to commit himself to the statement

that figures are made nine heads high, is somewhat extraordinary, for

eight heads, the proportion given by Vitruvius (III, 1) is the extreme

limit for a normal adult, and very few Greek statues, let alone living

persons, have heads so small. The recently discovered ‘Agias’ by

Lysippus, at Delphi, is very nearly eight heads high. The ‘Doryphorus’

at Naples not much more than seven. The ‘Choisseul Gouffier Apollo’

about seven and a half, etc. Vasari seems to have derived his curious

mode of reckoning from Filarete, who in Book 1 of his Treatise on

Architecture measures a man as follows: Head = 1 head, neck = ½,

breast = 1, body = 2, thighs = 2, legs = 2, foot = ½, total nine

heads. Alberti, Leonardo, Albrecht Dürer, and indeed almost all the

older writers on art, discourse on the proportions of the human

figure.

Footnote 156:

See Note on ‘Waxen Effigies and Medallions,’ at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 188.

Footnote 157:

One objection to an armature of wood is that the material may swell

with the damp of the clay and cause fissures. Iron is objectionable

because the rust discolours the clay. Modern sculptors often use

gas-piping in the skeletons of their models, as this is flexible and

will neither rust nor swell.

Footnote 158:

Baked flour used to be employed by plasterers to keep the plaster they

were modelling from setting too rapidly. See the Introduction by G. F.

Robinson to Millar’s _Plastering Plain and Decorative_, London, 1897.

The former used rye dough with good effect for the above purpose.

Footnote 159:

The tow or hay tied round the wood affords a good hold for the clay,

which is apt to slip on anything smooth.

Footnote 160:

This method of producing drapery is not very artistic.

Footnote 161:

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

to Sculpture, postea, p. 190.

Footnote 162:

See Note on ‘The Use of Full-sized Models’ at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 192.

Footnote 163:

The carvers’ tools described by Vasari are the same that appear to

have been in use in ancient Greece (see the article by Professor E.

Gardner already referred to), that are figured in the _Encyclopédie_

of the eighteenth century, and are now in use. Fig. 2, E to J, ante,

p. 48, shows a set of them actually employed in a stone carver’s

workshop at Settignano near Florence.

Footnote 164:

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

the reflections from it where it catches the light destroy the

delicacy of the effect of light and shade. Greek marbles were not

polished, save in some cases where the aim seems to have been to

imitate the appearance of shining bronze, but the Greeks finished

their marbles more smoothly than the sculptors of to-day, most of whom

prefer a ‘sensitive’ surface on which the marks of the last delicate

chiselling can be discerned. Michelangelo’s Dead Christ in the ‘Pietà’

of St. Peter’s, his most finished piece of marble work, may almost be

said to show polish, and Renaissance marbles generally are quite as

smoothly finished as antiques. In the case of coloured marbles, used

for surface decoration in plain panels, polish is of course necessary

in order that the colour and veining may appear, but it does not

follow from this that a self-coloured marble, carved into the

similitude of a face or figure, should be polished.

Footnote 165:

English terminology for the different kinds of reliefs, and for

sculpture generally, is very deficient, and many Italian terms are

employed. It may be noted that Vasari’s ‘half relief’ (mezzo rilievo)

is the highest kind he mentions, and would correspond to what is

called in English ‘high relief.’

Footnote 166:

See Note on ‘Italian and Greek Reliefs,’ at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 196.

Footnote 167:

Donatello’s flat, or ‘stiacciati’ reliefs are deservedly famous. The

difficulty here is to convey the impression of solid form of three

dimensions with the slightest possible actual salience. The treatment

of the torso of the Christ in the marble ‘Pietà’ of the Victoria and

Albert Museum is a good example.

Footnote 168:

The antique vessels of so-called ‘Arezzo’ ware are called Aretine

vases. Messer Giorgio was in duty bound to take some note of the

ancient pottery of his native city for it was from this that the

Vasari derived their family name. According to the family tree given

in a note to the Life of an ancestor of the historian (_Opere_, ed.

Milanesi, II, 561), the family came from Cortona, and the first who

settled in Arezzo was the historian’s great-grandfather, one Lazzaro,

an artist in ornamental saddlery. He had a son, Giorgio, who practised

the craft of the potter, and was especially concerned with the old

Roman Aretine vases the technique of which he tried to reproduce.

Hence he was called ‘Vasajo,’ ‘the vase maker,’ from which came the

family appellation Vasari.

This ancient Aretine ware ‘must be regarded as the Roman pottery par

excellence’ (Waters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, Lond., 1905, II,

480). It is practically the same ware that is known by the popular but

unscientific term ‘Samian,’ and consists in cups and bowls and dishes

usually of a small size of a fine red clay, ornamented with designs in

low relief, produced by the aid of stamps or moulds. It is these

relief ornaments that Vasari had in his mind when he wrote the words

in the text. Arezzo is noticed by Pliny and other ancient writers as a

great centre for the fabrication of this sort of ware, and Vasari

tells us how his grandfather, Giorgio the ‘vasajo,’ discovered near

the city some kilns of the ancient potters and specimens of their

work. Very good specimens of Aretine ware are to be seen in the Museum

at Arezzo, and the fabrique is represented in all important

collections of ancient pottery.

Footnote 169:

See Note on ‘The Processes of the Bronze Founder’ at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 199, which the reader who is

unacquainted with the subject, will find it useful to read forthwith.

The best commentary on Vasari’s and Cellini’s account of bronze

casting is to be found in the French _Encyclopédie_, where there is a

description, with numerous illustrations, of the casting in 1699 of

Girardon’s great equestrian statue of Louis XIV, destined for the

Place Vendôme. It was claimed at the time to be the largest known

single casting in the world, and represents in their utmost

elaboration the various processes described by Vasari. Some of the

illustrations are here reproduced, and will help to render clearer the

descriptions in the text.

Footnote 170:

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

figure. It will be noticed that the pieces are so planned that they

will all come away easily from the model and not be held by any

undercut projections. The small pieces are then all enclosed in an

outer shell divided into two halves, and called in French ‘chape’

answering to the ‘cappa’ of Vasari’s text. Plate VIII, A, shows the

model of the Louis XIV statue as piece-moulded.

Footnote 171:

In the case of a heavy casting such an armature is necessary, and must

be carefully constructed to give support at all points. The armature

within the core of the horse of Louis XIV is shown in Plate VIII, D.

Footnote 172:

Vasari here describes a method of constructing the indispensable shell

of wax which is to be replaced by the bronze. The hollow piece-mould

is lined section by section with wax and a core is then formed to fill

the rest of the interior and touch the inner surface of the wax at

every point. The plaster mould is then removed and the wax linings of

each of its sections are applied, each in its proper place, to the

core, and fixed thereon by skewers. There is then a complete figure in

wax, but, as this is made up of very many pieces, it has to be gone

over carefully to smooth over the joins and secure unity of surface.

Cellini’s plan seems a better one. He lines his hollow mould with a

sort of paste or dough, and then fills up with the core. The dough is

then removed and wax is poured in in its place, thus forming a

continuous skin and securing a more perfect unity in the waxen shell.

Footnote 173:

On Plate VIII at B we see the core covered with the skin of wax and

carefully gone over and finished in every part. The system of pipes

with which it is covered are the ‘vents’ that Vasari notices in § 62,

and also the channels through which the melted wax is to escape and

the molten bronze to enter, as noticed in §§ 63, 64.

Footnote 174:

Vasari actually says that it must be put ‘al fuoco’ ‘to the fire,’ but

it is clear that he does not mean that heat is at once to be applied

to it. If this were done the wax would all be melted off the core too

soon, before it was covered by the outer skin. It is only when the wax

has been securely enclosed between the core and the outer skin that

heat is needed to melt it away and leave its place free for the molten

metal.

Footnote 175:

Plate VIII, C, shows this outer armature, with the ends of the

transverse rods holding core and envelope together.

Footnote 176:

‘Give passage to the metal.’ Their essential purpose is to allow for

the escape of air which would be dangerous if driven by the metal into

a confined space.

Footnote 177:

It should be understood that, in the process Vasari has in mind, the

melted metal is introduced at the _bottom_ of the mould so as to rise

in it and expel before it the air. It is not poured in at the top.

Hence the metal enters at the same orifice at which the wax flows out.

Footnote 178:

Plate VIII, D, gives a section through the model in the casting-pit,

when all is ready for the actual operation of introducing the molten

metal. The wax has all been run out, and the outline of the figure and

of the horse is marked by a double line with a narrow space between.

It is this space that will be filled by the bronze which will be

introduced through numerous channels so that it may be distributed

rapidly and evenly over the whole surface it is to cover. When in the

pit the mould is packed all round with broken bricks or similar

material, so that ‘the bronze may not strain it,’ nor cause it to

shift.

Footnote 179:

The wax has already been carefully weighed, and in order to estimate

how much bronze will be required for the cast a rough calculation is

made based on the amount of wax.

Footnote 180:

The subject of the composition of bronze and of other alloys of copper

is a complicated one, for the mixtures specified or established by

analysis are very varied. Normally speaking, bronze is a mixture of

copper with about ten per cent. of tin, brass of copper with twenty to

forty per cent. of zinc. Vasari’s proportions for bells and for cannon

are pretty much what are given now. In the _Manuel de Fondeur_

(Manuels Roret) Paris, 1879, II, p. 94, eight to fifteen per cent. of

tin are prescribed for cannon, fifteen to thirty per cent. for bell

metal, the greater percentage of tin with the copper resulting in a

less tough but harder and so sharper sounding metal. It will be noted

however that for statuary metal Vasari specifies a mixture not of

copper and tin but of copper and brass, that is, copper and zinc.

Brass is composed of, say, twenty-five per cent. of zinc and

seventy-five per cent. of copper, so that a mixture of two thirds, or

sixty-six per cent., of copper with one third, or thirty-three per

cent., of brass would work out to about ten parts of zinc to ninety of

copper, and this agrees with classical proportions. The Greeks used

tin for their bronzes, but various mysterious ingredients were

supposed to be mingled in to produce special alloys. The Romans used

zinc, or rather zinciferous ores such as calamine, with or in place of

tin, and this is the tradition that Vasari follows.

A recent analysis of the composition of the bronze doors at

Hildesheim, dating from 1015 A.D., gives about seventy-six parts

copper, ten lead, eight tin, four zinc; and of the ‘Bernward’ pillar

ascribed to about the same date, seventy copper, twenty-three tin, and

five lead. These differences may surprise us, but metal casting in

those days was a matter of rule of thumb, and we may recall Cellini’s

account of his cramming all his household vessels of pewter into the

melting pot to make the metal flow for casting his ‘Perseus.’

Footnote 181:

Vasari’s account of the making of dies for medals and of the process

of striking these is clear, and agrees with the more elaborate

directions contained in the seventh and following chapters of

Cellini’s _Trattato dell’ Oreficeria_. Cellini however, unlike Vasari,

was a practical medallist, and he goes more into detail. The process

employed was not the direct cutting of the matrices or dies with

chisels, nor, as gems are engraved, by the use of the wheel and emery

(or diamond) powder, but the stamping into them of the design required

by main force, by means of specially shaped hard steel punches on

which different parts of the design had been worked in relief. The

steel of the matrix or die had of course to be previously softened in

the fire, or these punches would have made no impression on it. When

finished it was again hardened by tempering. It may be noticed that

the dies from which Greek coins were struck were to all appearance

engraved as gems were engraved by the direct use of cutting tools or

tools that, like the wheel, wore away the material with the aid of

sand or emery.

The two matrices, or dies, for the obverse and reverse of the medal,

being now prepared, the medal is not immediately struck. In the case

of the Greek coin a bean-shaped piece, or a disk, of plain metal,

usually of silver, called a ‘blank’ or ‘flan,’ was placed between the

two dies and pressed into their hollows by a blow or blows of the

hammer, so that all that was engraved on them in intaglio came out on

the silver in relief. Vasari’s process is more elaborate. A sort of

trial medal is first struck from the matrices in a soft material such

as lead or wax, and this trial medal is reproduced by the ordinary

process of casting in the gold or silver or bronze which is to be the

material of the final medal. This cast medal has of course the general

form required, but it is not sharp nor has it a fine surface. It is

therefore placed between the matrices and forcibly compressed so as to

acquire all the finish of detail and texture desired.

Footnote 182:

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

to be used when nothing better can be obtained. It should not however

be judged from the achievements of the domestic plasterer of to-day,

who has to trust sometimes to the wall-paper to keep his stuff from

crumbling away. Plaster as used by the ancients, and through a good

part of the mediaeval and Renaissance periods up to the eighteenth

century, is a fine material, susceptible of very varied and effective

artistic treatment. It was made by the Greeks of so exquisite a

quality that it was equivalent to an artificial marble. It could be

polished, so Vitruvius tells us, till it would reflect the beholder’s

face as in a mirror, and he describes how the Roman connoisseurs of

his time would actually cut out plain panels of Greek stucco from old

walls and frame them into the plaster work of their own rooms, just as

if they were slabs of precious marble. (_De Architectura_, VII, iii,

10.) Vitruvius prescribes no fewer than six successive coats of

plaster for a wall, each laid on before the last is dry, the last coat

being of white lime and finely powdered marble.

By the Villa Farnesina at Rome some Roman, or more probably Greek,

plaster decoration was discovered a few years ago that surpassed any

work of the kind elsewhere known. We find there the moulded or stamped

ornament Vasari describes, as well as figure compositions modelled by

hand, while the plain surfaces are in themselves a delight to the

artistic eye.

Among the best and best known stucco work, in figures and ornaments,

of the later Italian Renaissance, may be ranked that at Fontainebleau

by Primaticcio and other artists from the peninsula who were invited

thither by François I, for the decoration of the ‘Galerie François I’

and the ‘Escalier du Roi.’

Footnote 183:

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

_Schedula_, Book one, chapter 17, and also by Cennini, _Trattato_,

chapters 110–112.

Soft cheese from cows’ milk must, according to the earlier recipe, be

shredded finely into hot water and braised in a mortar to a paste. It

must then be immersed in cold water till it hardens, and then rubbed

till it is quite smooth on a board and afterwards mixed with quick

lime to the consistency of a stiff paste. Panels cemented with this,

says Theophilus, will be held so fast when they are dry that neither

moisture nor heat will bring them apart. Vasari does not seem to have

such faith in the mucilage, and prefers that made from boiling down

shreds of parchment and other skins. The twelfth century writer knows

how to make this also. See chapter eighteen of the first Book of the

_Schedula_.

Footnote 184:

Every museum contains examples of these delicate German carvings in

hard materials.

Footnote 185:

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

account was given of some sculptures in travertine on the façade of

the church of S. Luigi dei Francesi at Rome by a ‘Maestro Gian’ who

has been conjecturally identified as a certain Jean Chavier or

Chavenier of Rouen who worked at Rome in the first quarter of the

sixteenth century. Vasari in this place introduces an artist of the

name of ‘Maestro Janni francese,’ and the question at once arises

whether he is the same person as the ‘Maestro Gian’ of Rome.

The statue here described is to be seen in the church of the

Annunziata at Florence, but not where Vasari saw it. It has been

placed for about the last half century in the spacious round choir,

where it occupies a niche in the wall of the second chapel to the left

as one faces the high altar. It has been painted white in the hope

that it may be mistaken for marble, and this characteristic

performance dates from about 1857. Certain fissures observable show

however that it is of wood, and one of the Frati remembers it when it

was as Vasari saw it ‘nello stesso colore del legname.’ The work is

shown on Plate IX. We have been unable to discover anything certain

about the artist. The figure, which is in excellent preservation,

speaks for itself. The Saint has a tight fitting cap over his head and

curling hair and beard. His eyes are almost closed as he looks down

with a somewhat affected air at his wounded leg to which the finger of

his right hand is pointing. The other hand holds a staff, round which

the drapery curls and over the top of which it is caught. This drapery

bears out Vasari’s description of it as ‘traforato’ ‘cut into.’ It is

floridly treated with the sharp angles common in the carving of the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Germany, Flanders, and parts of

France. M. Marcel Reymond, who has kindly given his opinion on the

photographs submitted to him, has written about it as follows: ‘Le St.

Roch, par la surcharge de vêtements, l’excès de reliefs, l’agitation

des draperies, se rattache à l’art français tel qu’il s’était

constitué au xiv^{me} siècle, et tel qu’il s’était continué jusqu’au

xvi^{me} siècle, notamment dans le Bourgogne et la Champagne.’ He does

not consider the two ‘Maîtres Jean’ the same person. ‘Ce sont sans

doute deux artistes du xvi^{me} siècle, l’un travaillant la pierre, le

travertin, l’autre travaillant le bois. C’est leur aptitude à

travailler ces deux matières, que les artistes italiens travaillaient

moins bien que les français qui a retenu l’attention de Vasari sur eux

et qui leur a fait attribuer une place si importante dans les préfaces

de Vasari.’ Our study of the originals at Rome and Florence has led us

to the same opinion. The S. Rocco is Gothic in feeling, the

‘Salamander’ and other pieces at Rome are Renaissance. The Roman

‘Maestro Gian’ may be credited with an Italian style, but Vasari does

not show much critical acumen when he sees ‘la maniera italiana’ in

the S. Rocco of the Florentine Janni.

Footnote 186:

The first two sections, §§ 74, 75, of this chapter were added by

Vasari in the second edition. They contain his contribution to the

philosophy of the graphic art. It will be noted that his word

‘Disegno’ corresponds alike to our more general word ‘design’ and the

more special term ‘drawing.’

Footnote 187:

This remark of Vasari is significant of the change in architectural

practice between the mediaeval and modern epochs. That the architect

is a man that sits at home and makes drawings, while practical

craftsmen carry them out, is to us a familiar idea, but the notion

would greatly have astonished the builders of the French Gothic

cathedrals or the Florentines of the fourteenth century. In mediaeval

practice the architect was the master of the work, carrying the scheme

of the whole in his head, but busy all the time with the actual

materials and tools, and directing progress rather from the

scaffolding than from the drawing office. On the tombstone of the

French architect of the thirteenth century, Hughes Libergier, at

Reims, he is shown with the mason’s square, rule, and compasses about

him; while in the relief that illustrates ‘Building’ on Giotto’s

Campanile at Florence we see the master mason directing the operations

of the journeymen from a position on the structure itself. In the

present day there is a strong feeling in the profession that this

separation of architect and craftsman, which dates from the later

Renaissance, is a bad thing for art, and that the designer should be

in more intimate touch with the materials and processes of building.

Footnote 188:

It is characteristically Florentine to regard painting as essentially

the filling up of outlines, and to colour in staccato fashion with an

assorted set of tints arranged in gradation. To the eye of the born

painter outlines do not exist and nature is seen in tone and colour,

while colours are like the tones of a violin infinite in gradation,

not distinct like the notes of a piano. With the exception of the

Venetians and some other North Italians such as Correggio and Lotto,

the Italians generally painted by filling outlines with local tints

graded as light, middle, and dark, and the Florentines were

pre-eminent in the emphasis they laid on the well-drawn outline as the

foundation of the art. Since the seventeenth century the general idea

of what constitutes the art of painting has suffered a change and

Vasari’s account of Florentine practice, in which he was himself an

expert, is all the more interesting. Vasari’s point of view is that of

the frescoist. In that process, which, as we shall see, had to be

carried out swiftly and directly so as to be finished at one sitting,

it was practically necessary to have the various tints in their

gradations mixed and ready to hand. The whole method and genius of oil

painting, as moderns understand it, is different, and its processes

much more varied and subtle.

Footnote 189:

The innumerable sketches and finished drawings that have come down to

us from the hands of Florentine artists testify to the importance

given in the school to preliminary studies for painting, and any

collection will furnish examples of the different methods of execution

here described. Drawings by Venetian masters, who felt in colour

rather than in form, are not so numerous or so elaborate.

Footnote 190:

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

perspective.

Footnote 191:

This practice is noticed in the case of more than one artist of whom

Vasari has written the biography. Tintoretto is one. See also postea,

p. 216.

Footnote 192:

See the Note on ‘Fresco Painting’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’

to Painting, postea, p. 287.

Footnote 193:

Michelangelo’s greatest _tour de force_ in foreshortening, much lauded

by Vasari in his Life of the master, is the figure of the prophet

Jonah on the end wall of the Sistine chapel. It is painted at the

springing of the vault, on a surface that is inclined sharply towards

the spectator, but the figure is so drawn as to appear to be leaning

back in the opposite direction.

Footnote 194:

Correggio is responsible for many of the forced effects of drawing in

the decorative painting of vaults and ceilings in later times, but the

Umbrian Melozzo da Forlì in his painting of the Ascension of Christ,

now destroyed save for the fragments in the Quirinal and in the

sacristy of St. Peter’s at Rome, may have the doubtful honour of

beginning the practice of foreshortening a whole composition, so that

the scene is painted as it would appear were we looking up at it from

underneath.

Footnote 195:

This truth, about the mutual influence of colours in juxtaposition,

was well put by Sir Charles Eastlake when he wrote, in his _Materials

for a History of Oil Painting_, ‘flesh is never more glowing than when

opposed to blue, never more pearly than when compared with red, never

ruddier than in the neighbourhood of green, never fairer than when

contrasted with black, nor richer or deeper than when opposed to

white.’

Footnote 196:

Vitruvius describes the fresco process in his seventh Book. See Note

on ‘Fresco Painting’ at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting,

postea, p. 287. This chapter is one of the most interesting in the

three ‘Introductions.’

Footnote 197:

Travertine, next to marble, makes when burnt the whitest lime (see §

30, ante, p. 86). From this lime the fresco white, called bianco

Sangiovanni, is made, and Cennini gives the recipe for its preparation

in his 58th chapter. The ordinary lead white (biacca) cannot be used

in fresco.

Footnote 198:

The word ‘tempera’ is used by Vasari and other writers as a noun

meaning (1) a substance mixed with another, as a medium with pigments

(2) a liquid in which hot steel is plunged to give it a particular

molecular quality (ante, p. 30) (3) the quality thus given to the

steel (ante, p. 32), while (4) it has come to mean in modern times, as

in the heading of this Note, a particular kind of painting. It is

really to be regarded as the imperative of the verb ‘temperare,’ which

alike in Latin and in Italian means ‘to divide or proportion duly,’

‘to qualify by mixing,’ and generally ‘to regulate’ or ‘to

discipline.’ ‘Tempera’ thus means strictly ‘mix’ or ‘regulate.’ It is

used in the latter sense in metallurgy, as the liquid which Vasari

calls (ante, p. 30) a ‘tempera’ (translated ‘tempering-bath’)

regulates the amount of hardness or elasticity required in the metal,

and the quality the steel thus receives is called (ante, p. 32) its

‘temper.’ In the case of painting the ‘tempera’ is the binding

material mixed with the pigment to secure its adhesion to the ground

when it is dry. The painting process is, in Italian, painting ‘a

tempera’ ‘with a mixture,’ and our expression ‘tempera painting’ is a

loose one. For the form of the word we may compare ‘recipe,’ also

employed as a substantive but really an imperative meaning ‘take.’

Strictly speaking any medium mixed with pigments makes the process one

‘a tempera.’ Many substances may be thus used, some soluble in water,

as size, gum, honey, and the like; others insoluble in water, such as

drying oils, varnishes, resins, etc., while the inside of an egg which

is in great part oleaginous may have a place between. It is not the

usage however to apply the term ‘tempera’ to drying oils or varnishes,

and a distinction is always made between ‘tempera painting’ and ‘oil

painting.’ See Note on ‘Tempera Painting,’ postea, p. 291.

Footnote 199:

This practice of covering wooden panels with linen and laying over

this the gesso painting ground was in use in ancient Egypt. In fact

the methods described by Cennini of preparing and grounding panels are

almost exactly the same as those used in ancient Egypt for painting

wooden mummy-cases. Even the practice, so much used in early Italian

art, of modelling details and ornaments in relief in gesso and gilding

them, is common on the mummy-cases. On the subject of gesso see Note 5

on p. 249.

Footnote 200:

Vasari’s expression ‘rosso dell’ uovo o tempera, la quale è questa’

calls attention to the fact, to which his language generally bears

testimony, that he looked upon the yolk of egg medium as the tempera

_par excellence_. When he uses the term ‘tempera’ alone he has the egg

medium in his mind, and the size medium is something apart. See this

chapter throughout.

Footnote 201:

Tempera painting has had a far longer history and more extensive use

than any other kind. The technique predominated for all kinds of

painting among the older Oriental peoples and in classical lands, and

was in use both on walls and on panels in Western Europe north of the

Alps during the whole mediaeval period, while south of the Alps and at

Byzantium it was to a great extent superseded for mural painting by

fresco, but remained in fashion for panels till the end of the

fifteenth century. After the fifteenth century the oil medium, as

Vasari remarks, superseded it entirely for portable pictures, and

partly for work on walls and ceilings, but in our own time there has

been a partial revival of the old technique. See Note on ‘Tempera

Painting,’ postea, p. 291.

The whole question of the different vehicles and methods used in

painting at various periods is a difficult and complicated one, and

too often chemical analysis fails to give satisfactory results owing

to the small amount of material available for experiment. Berger, in

his _Beiträge zur Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Maltechnik_, an

unfinished work that has already run to a thousand pages, goes

elaborately into the subject, but has to admit that many points are

still doubtful. It makes comparatively little difference what

particular medium is used in tempera painting, but it is of great

importance to decide whether a particular class of work is in tempera

or in fresco. In connection with this Berger has reopened the old

controversy as to the technique of Pompeian wall paintings, which have

been accepted as frescoes, on the authority of Otto Dönner, for a

generation past. There are difficulties about Pompeian work and it is

well that the question has again been raised, but Berger goes much too

far when he attempts to deny to the ancients the knowledge and use of

the fresco process. The evidence on this point of Vitruvius is quite

decisive, as he, and Pliny after him, refer to the process of painting

on wet plaster in the most unmistakeable terms. See Note on ‘Fresco

Painting, postea, p. 287.

Footnote 202:

This passage about the early painters of Flanders occurs just as it

stands, with some trifling verbal differences, in Vasari’s first

edition of 1550. The best commentary on it is, first, the account of

the same artists in Guicciardini’s _Descrittione di Tutti i Paesi

Bassi_, first published at Antwerp in 1567, and next, Vasari’s own

notes on divers Flemish artists which he added at the end of the

_Lives_ in the second edition of 1568 (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, VII, 579

f.). He there made certain additions and corrections from

Guicciardini, the most noteworthy of which is the mention of Hubert

van Eyck, whom Vasari ignores in this passage of the Introduction, but

who is just referred to by Guicciardini at the end of his sentences on

the younger brother—‘A pari a pari di Giovanni andava Huberto suo

fratello, il quale viveva, e dipingeva continuamente sopra le medesime

opere, insieme con esso fratello.’ Vasari however in the notes of 1568

goes much farther than this, and, though he does not call Hubert the

elder brother, he seems to ascribe to him personally the supposed

‘invention’—‘Huberto suo fratello, che nel 1510 (_sic_) mise in luce

l’ invenzione e modo di colorire a olio’ (_Opere_, l.c.). ‘John of

Bruges’ is of course Jan van Eyck. Vasari writes of him at the end of

the _Lives_ as ‘John Eyck of Bruges.’ Vasari’s statement in this

sentence is of great historical importance, for it is the first

affirmation of a definite ‘invention’ of oil painting, and the first

ascription of this invention to van Eyck. As van Eyck’s own epitaph

makes no mention of this, and as oil painting was practised long

before his time, Vasari’s statement has naturally been questioned, and

on the subject the reader will find a Note at the close of the

‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 294.

Footnote 203:

It was long supposed that this picture was the ‘Epiphany’ preserved

behind the High Altar of the Church of S. Barbara, Naples, but Crowe

and Cavalcaselle, _History of Painting in North Italy_, II, 103,

pronounce this ‘a feeble and injured picture of the eighteenth

century.’

Footnote 204:

Frederick of Urbino (there were not two of the name as Vasari

supposes) seems to have had a bathroom decorated with secular

compositions by the Flemish master. Facio, whose tract _De Viris

Illustribus_, written in the middle of the fifteenth century, was

printed at Florence in 1745, writes, p. 46, of ‘Joannes Gallicus’ (who

can be identified as Jan van Eyck) who had painted certain ‘picturae

nobiles’ then in the possession of Cardinal Octavianus, with

‘representations of fair women only slightly veiled at the bath.’ Such

pictures were considered suitable decorations for bath chambers. There

is a curious early example of mediaeval date in the Schloss

Runkelstein near Botzen in the Tyrol, in the form of wall paintings

round a bathroom on one side of which nude figures are seen preparing

to enter the water, while on two other walls spectators of both sexes

are seen looking in through an open arcade. The pictures here referred

to by van Eyck are now lost, but by a curious coincidence attention

has just been directed to an existing copy of one of them, of which

Facio gives a special notice. The copy occurs in a painting by

Verhaecht of Antwerp, 1593–1637, that represents the picture gallery

of an Antwerp connoisseur at about the date 1615. There on the wall is

seen hanging the van Eyck, that corresponds closely to the full

description given by Facio. The painting by Verhaecht was shown at

Burlington House in the Winter Exhibition, 1906–7, and in the ‘Toison

d’Or’ Exhibition at Bruges in 1907. See also the _Burlington

Magazine_, February, 1907, p. 325. It may be added that the Cardinal

Octavianus mentioned above was a somewhat obscure prelate, who

received the purple from Gregory XII in 1408.

Footnote 205:

The latest editors of Vasari (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, I, 184) think

this may be a picture in the Museum at Naples, ascribed there to an

apocryphal artist ‘Colantonio del Fiore.’ Von Wurzbach says it is by a

Neapolitan painter influenced by the Flemings.

Footnote 206:

Roger van der Weyden, more properly called, as by Guicciardini and by

Vasari in 1568, ‘Roger of Brussels.’ In 1449 he made a journey to

Italy, and stayed for a time at Ferrara, which under the rule of the

art-loving Este was very hospitable to foreign craftsmen. He was in

Rome in 1450 and may have visited Florence and other centres. His own

style in works subsequent to this journey shows little of Italian

influence.

Footnote 207:

Hans Memling. ‘No Flemish painter of note,’ remark Crowe and

Cavalcaselle, _Early Flemish Painters_, p. 256, ‘produced pictures

more attractive to the Italians than Memling.’ The Portinari, for whom

Memling worked, were Florentine merchants who had a house at Bruges,

the commercial connection of which with Tuscany was very close. In his

Notes on Flemish Painters at the end of the _Lives_, Vasari says that

the subject of ‘a small picture in the possession of the Duke’ which

is probably the one here mentioned, was ‘The Passion of Christ.’ If

this be the case, it cannot be the beautiful little Memling now in the

Uffizi, No. 703, for the subject of this is ‘The Virgin and Child.’ It

might possibly however be the panel of ‘The Seven Griefs,’ a Passion

picture in the Museum at Turin. On the other hand, Passavant thought

the Turin panel was the ‘Careggi’ picture that Vasari goes on to

mention. See Note on p. 268 of Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s work.

Footnote 208:

The German editors of Vasari identified Lodovico da Luano with the

well-known painter Dierich Bouts of Louvain, but the name Ludovico

(Chlodwig, ‘Warrior of Renown’) is not the same etymologically as

Dierich (Theodoric, ‘Prince of the People’). It is to be noted that in

Guicciardini we find a mention of ‘Dirich da Louano,’ who is

undoubtedly Dierich Bouts (the surname is derived from St. Rombout the

patron of Haarlem, where the painter, who is also called ‘Dirick van

Haarlem’ [see below], was born) and also a mention of Vasari’s

‘Ludovico da Luvano.’ A scrutiny however of the sentence in

Guicciardini, where the last-mentioned name occurs, shows that it is

copied almost verbatim from our text of Vasari. (Vasari

[1550]:—‘Similmente Lodovico da Luano & Pietro Christa, & maestro

Martino, & ancora Giusto da Guanto, che fece la tavola della comunione

de’l Duca d’ Vrbino, & altre pitture; & Vgo d’ Anuersa, che fe la

tauola di Sancta Maria Nuoua di Fiorenza’; Guicciardini:—‘Seguirono a

mano a mano Lodouico da Louano, Pietro Crista, Martino d’ Holanda, &

Giusto da Guanto, che fece quella nobil’ pittura della comunione al

Duca d’ Vrbino, & dietro a lui venne Vgo d’ Anuersa, che fece la

bellissima tauola, che si vede a Firenze in santa Maria nuoua’).

Vasari is accordingly responsible for this ‘Ludovico da Luano,’ whose

name is duly chronicled in von Wurzbach’s ‘_Niederländisches

Künstler-Lexicon_, Leipzig, 1906, II, p. 69, on the authority of

Guicciardini alone, and who is called in M. Ruelens’s annotations to

the French edition of Crowe and Cavalcaselle ‘Louys de Louvain

(peintre encore inconnu).’ Subsequently Guicciardini mentions also a

‘Dirich d’ Harlem,’ who can be none other than the same Dierick Bouts,

and Vasari, as a return favour, copies back all three Diericks into

his Notes at the end of the edition of 1568. The first ‘Ludovico’ may

be merely due to a mistake in the text of Vasari carelessly adopted by

Guicciardini. Vasari’s copyist may have written ‘Ludovico’ in place of

the somewhat similar ‘Teodorico.’ There was however a certain

Ludovicus Dalmau or Dalman (D’Alamagna?), a Flemish painter who worked

at Barcelona in Spain about 1445 (von Wurzbach, _sub voce_) who may be

meant, though there is no indication of a connection between him and

Louvain.

Footnote 209:

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

imitator, though as Mr Weale has shown not an actual pupil, of the van

Eycks. Von Wurzbach says that Guicciardini was the first to mention

his name, but Vasari in 1550 already knows him. As an explanation of

the surname it has been suggested that the artist’s father may have

had a reputation as a painter or carver of Christ-figures, so that

Petrus would be called ‘son of the Christ-man.’

Footnote 210:

The name Martin belongs to painters of two generations in Ghent, and

von Wurzbach thinks it is the earlier of these, Jan Martins,

apparently a scholar of the van Eycks, who is referred to here, and

called by Guicciardini (see above), and by Vasari in 1568, ‘Martino d’

Holanda.’ There was a later and better known Martin of Ghent called

‘Nabor Martin.’ The more famous ‘Martins,’ ‘of Heemskerk,’ and

‘Schongauer,’ when referred to by Vasari, have more distinct

indications of their identity. See, e.g., _Opere_, V, 396.

Footnote 211:

Justus of Ghent worked at Urbino, where he finished the altar piece

referred to by Vasari in 1474. The ‘other pictures’ may be a series of

panels painted for the library at Urbino, on which Crowe and

Cavalcaselle have an interesting paragraph, _op. cit._ p. 180.

Footnote 212:

Hugo of Antwerp is Hugo van der Goes, whose altar piece painted for S.

Maria Nuova at Florence has now been placed in the Uffizi.

Footnote 213:

Vasari’s stories about the connection with oil painting of Antonello

da Messina, Domenico Veneziano, and Andrea dal Castagno have of course

been subjected to a good deal of hostile criticism. Those about the

two latter artists are in the meantime relegated to the limbo of

fable, but the case of Antonello da Messina is somewhat different, and

we are not dependent in his case on Vasari alone. He certainly did not

visit Flanders in the lifetime of Jan van Eyck, for this artist died

before Antonello was born, but von Wurzbach accepts as authentic a

visit on his part to Flanders between 1465 and 1475, and sees evidence

of what he learned there in his extant works (_Niederländisches

Künstler-Lexicon_, sub voce, ‘Antonello’).

Footnote 214:

‘Terre da campane,’ ‘bell earths.’ There seem to be two possible

meanings for the phrase. It may refer to the material used for the

moulds in bell casting, or to the clay from which are made the little

terra-cotta bells by which children in Italy set great store on the

occasion of the mid-summer festival. This last is improbable.

Baldinucci, _Vocabolario del Disegno_, sub voce ‘Nero di Terra di

Campana,’ says that this is a colour made out of a certain scale that

forms on moulds for casting bells or cannon, and that it is good with

oil, but does not stand in fresco. Lomazzo also mentions the pigment.

Footnote 215:

‘L’abbozza’ evidently refers to the first or underpainting, not to the

sketch in chalk, for in the first edition the passage has some

additional words which make this clear. They run as follows:

‘desegnando quella: e così ne primi colori l’abozza, il che alcuni

chiamono imporre.’

Footnote 216:

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

_De Re Aedificatoria_.

Footnote 217:

The matter in our § 87 was added in the edition of 1568. Though Vasari

declared so unhesitatingly for fresco as the finest of all processes

of painting, he tells us that he used oil for a portion of his mural

work in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, when he prepared it for the

residence of Duke Cosimo, and we shall notice later his praise of

tempera (postea, p. 291). Vasari describes how he painted in oil on

the walls of a refectory at Naples (_Opere_, VII, 674), and gives us

an interesting notice of his experiments in the technique about the

year 1540 at the monastery of the Camaldoli, near Arezzo, where he

says ‘feci esperimento di unire il colorito a olio con quello (fresco)

e riuscimmi assai acconciamente’ (_Opere_, VII, 667). The technique

required proper working out, for it was not a traditional one.

The most notable instance of its employment before the end of the

fifteenth century is in the case of the ‘Last Supper’ by Leonardo da

Vinci at Milan. A commission of experts has recently been examining

the remains of this, the most famous mural painting in the world, and

has ascertained that the original process employed by Leonardo was not

pure oil painting but a mixed process in which oil played only a part.

The result at any rate, as all the world is aware, was the speedy ruin

of the work, which now only tells as a design, there being but little

of its creator’s actual handiwork now visible.

Some words of the Report are of sufficient interest to be quoted. ‘Pur

troppo, dunque, la stessa tecnica del maestro aveva in sè il germe

della rovina, ben presto, infatti, avvertita nelle sue opere murali.

Spirito indagitore, innovatore, voglioso sempre di “provare e

riprovare” egli voile abbandonare i vecchi, sicuri e sperimentati

sistemi, per tentare l’ esito di sostanze oleose in miscela coi

colori. Perchè nemmeno può dirsi ch’ ei dipingesse, in questo caso,

semplicemente, ad olio come avrebbe fatto ogni altro mortale entrato

nell’ errore di seguire quel metodo anche pei muri. Egli tentò invece

cosa affato nuova; poichè, se da un lato appaiono tracce di parziali e

circoscritte arricciature in uso pel fresco, dall’ altro, la presenza

delle sostanze oleose è accertata dalla mancanza di adhesione dei

colori con la superficie del muro e dalle speciali screpolature della

crosta o pelle formata dai colori stessi, non che dal modo con quale

il dipinto si è andato e si va lentamente disgregando e sfaldando.’

_Bollettino d’ Arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione_, Roma,

1907, I, p. 17.

Another famous instance of the use of oil paint in mural work about a

generation later is to be found in the Sala di Costantino in the

Vatican, where Raphael’s pupils have left two of the decorative

figures by the side of the Popes executed in that medium. One

(Urbanity) is close to the door leading to the Chapel of Nicholas V,

the other is on the wall containing the battle, and is in better

preservation than the first which is covered with wrinkles. The oil

paint gives a certain depth and richness of effect, but there is the

fatal disadvantage that the painting does not look a part of the wall

as is the case with work done in fresco. The fresco is really executed

in the material of the ground, whereas oils and varnishes have nothing

in common with lime and earths, and the connection of structure and

decoration is broken. One of the most successful pieces of work of the

kind is the painting of ‘Christ at the Pillar’ by Sebastian del Piombo

in S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome. The work, which is executed on a

cylindrical surface, is rather shiny, an appearance which in mural

painting is to be avoided, and it has darkened somewhat, though this

defect is not very apparent and the experiment has on the whole

succeeded well. Vasari’s Life of Fra Sebastiano contains a good deal

of information about this particular technique, which was essayed in

the later age of Italian painting more often than is sometimes

imagined. It needs hardly to be said that this oil painting on the

actual plaster of the wall is a different thing from the modern

process of painting on canvas in the studio and then cementing the

completed picture on to the wall. Mural painting on canvas was

introduced by the Venetians in the fifteenth century, for at Venice

atmospheric conditions seem to have been unfavourable to the

preservation of frescoes, and the Venetians preferred canvas to

plaster for their work in oils. It would be interesting to know

whether the canvas was ever fixed _in situ_ before the painter

commenced operations, as from the point of view of the preservation of

decorative effect this would be of importance. Vasari’s story about

Tintoretto’s proceedings at the Scuola di S. Rocco (_Opere_, VI, 594)

is evidence that canvases were painted at home and put up on walls or

ceilings when finished. Of course if a wall be covered with canvas

before the painting begins the canvas is to all intents and purposes

the wall itself, grounded in a certain way.

Footnote 218:

The use of canvas for the purpose in view was, as Vasari mentions

below, very common at Venice, where as early as about 1476, if we

believe Vasari (_Opere_, III, 156), Gentile Bellini executed in this

technique the large scenic pictures with which he adorned the Hall of

Grand Council in the Ducal Palace. Such a process would come naturally

enough to Italian painters as well as to the Flemings, for they had

been accustomed from time immemorial to paint for temporary purposes

on banners and draperies, after a fashion of which Mantegna’s

decorative frieze on fine canvas at Hampton Court is a classic

example. Canvas had however been actually used for pictures even in

ancient Egypt. Not only was the practice of stretching linen over

wooden panels to receive the painting ground in use there in the time

of the New Empire, but some of the recently discovered mummy-case

portraits from Egypt, of the earliest Christian centuries, are

actually on canvas. There is an example in the National Gallery. At

Rome painting on canvas is mentioned by Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, XXXV, 51)

and Boethius (_de Arithmetica_, Praef., I) says that ‘picturae ...

lintea operosis elaborata textrinis ... materiam praestant.’ The

Netherland painters of the fifteenth century nearly always painted on

panel, but canvas was sometimes used, as by Roger van der Weyden in

his paintings for the Town Hall at Brussels.

Footnote 219:

Vasari prescribes ‘due o tre _macinate_’ of white lead for mixture

with the flour and nut oil for the priming of canvas. A ‘macinata’ was

the amount placed at one time on the ‘macina’ or stone for grinding

colours. Berger suggests ‘handfuls’ as a translation, but the amount

would be small, as for careful grinding only one or two lumps of the

pigment would be dealt with at one time.

Footnote 220:

The Ducal Palace, that adjoins S. Marco, is probably the building in

Vasari’s mind. The Library of S. Marco, Sansovino’s masterpiece, might

also be meant, as this was called sometimes the Palace of S. Marco. We

must remember however that, as noticed before, ante, p. 56, this

building, at the time of Vasari’s visit to Venice, was still

unfinished.

Footnote 221:

On panels and canvases as used at Venice Vasari has an interesting

note at the beginning of his Life of Jacopo Bellini (_Opere_, III,

152). This was a subject that would at once appeal to his practical

mind when he visited the city. He notices incidentally that the usual

woods for panels were ‘oppio’ _acer campestris_, maple; or ‘gattice,’

the _populus alba_ of Horace, but that the Venetians used only fir

from the Alps. (Cennini, c. 113, recommends poplar or lime or willow.

Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XVI, 187, speaks of larch and box, and Ilg says

that northern painters generally used oak.) The Venetian preference

for canvas, Vasari says, was due to the facts that it did not split

nor harbour worms, was portable, and could be obtained of the size

desired; this last he notes too in our text. Berger (_Beiträge_, IV,

29), gives the meaning of ‘Grossartigkeit’ to the word ‘grandezza’

used above by Vasari, but of course it only means material size, not

‘grandeur’ in an aesthetic sense.

Footnote 222:

See ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, § 13, ante, p. 54. The stone is a

species of slate. Slate is suitable for painting on. See Church’s

_Chemistry of Paints and Painting_, 1890, p. 21.

Footnote 223:

Greek paintings on marble panels have come down to us from various

periods of ancient art. Some early Attic specimens on tombstones are

in the museums of Athens, and at Herculaneum there was found an

interesting painting on marble of a group of Greek heroines playing at

knuckle bones. A much earlier slab with a figure of a warrior is in

the Acropolis Museum at Athens.

Footnote 224:

These chiaroscuri or monochromes are characteristic of the later

Renaissance. They may either be frankly decorative, and in this form

obey the rules of all other pictorial enrichment; or they may have an

illusive intention, and be designed to produce the appearance on a

flat wall of architectural members or sculptured or cast-bronze

reliefs. In this case, when on monumental buildings and permanent,

they are insincere and opposed to sound decorative principles, though

on temporary structures they are quite in place. Vasari was a famous

adept at the construction and adornment of such fabrics, which were in

great demand for the numerous Florentine pageants and processions. See

his letters, passim.

Footnote 225:

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

frescoes on the vault of the Sistine. The medallions held by the pairs

of decorative figures of youths on the cornice are painted to

represent reliefs in this metal. Raphael’s Stanze and Loggie also

furnish instances, and there are good examples on the external façade

of the Palazzo Ricci at Rome.

Footnote 226:

The clay or earth that Vasari speaks of forms the body of the

‘distemper’ or ‘gouache,’ as it would be called respectively in

Britain and in France, and takes the place of the ‘whitening’ used in

modern times. Baldinucci in his _Vocabolario_ explains ‘Terra di cava

o Terretta’ as ‘the earth (clay) with which vessels for the table are

made, that mixed with pounded charcoal is used by painters for

backgrounds and monochromes, and also for primings, and with a tempera

of size for the canvases with which are painted triumphal arches,

perspectives, and the like.’ It is of very fine and even texture, and

Baldinucci says it was found near St. Peter’s at Rome, and also in

great quantity at Monte Spertoli, thirteen miles from Florence.

Footnote 227:

This process of wetting the back of the canvas is to be noted. The

chief inconvenience of the kind of work here spoken of is that it

dries very quickly, and dries moreover very much lighter than when the

work is wet. Hence it is an advantage to keep the ground wet as long

as possible till the tints are properly fused, so that all may dry

together. Wetting the back of the canvas secures this end. The

technique that Vasari is describing is the same as that of the modern

theatrical scene-painter, and would be called ‘distemper painting.’

The colours are mixed with whitening, or finely-ground chalk, and

tempered with size. The whitening makes them opaque and gives them

‘body,’ but is also the cause of their drying light. F. Lloyds, in his

_Practical Guide to Scene Painting and Painting in Distemper_, Lond.

1879, says (p. 42) ‘In the study of the art of distemper painting, a

source of considerable embarrassment to the inexperienced eye is that

the colours when wet present such a different appearance from what

they do when dry.’

Footnote 228:

Does Vasari mean by ‘tempera’ yolk of egg? It has this sense with him

sometimes, as in the heading of chapter VI.

Footnote 229:

Cennini in his 67th chapter gives directions for preparing the mixed

colour he calls verdaccio. It was a compound of white, dark ochre,

black and red.

Footnote 230:

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

superimposed coat to bring to view an under layer of a different

colour, seems to have been established first in pottery making, and in

this connection the Italians called it ‘Sgraffiato.’ The adoption of

the process for the decoration of surfaces of plaster or cement was an

innovation of the Renaissance, and Vasari appears to have been the

first writer who gives a recipe for it. According to his account in

the _Lives_, it was a friend of Morto da Feltro, the Florentine Andrea

di Cosimo, who first started the work, and Vasari describes the

process he employed in phrases that correspond with the wording of the

present chapter (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, V, 207). A modern expert

describes the process as follows: ‘A wall is covered with a layer of

tinted plaster, and on this is superimposed a thin coating of white

plaster. The outer coat is scratched through, and the colour behind it

is revealed. Then all the white surface outside the design is cut

away, and a cameo-like effect given to the design. This is the art of

Sgraffito as known to the Italian Renaissance’ (_Transactions_,

_R.I.B.A._, 1889, p. 125). The process dropped out of use after a

while, but was revived in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth

century, mainly through the agency of the architect Gottfried Semper,

the author of _Der Stil_. It is sometimes used in our own country both

on monumental and on domestic buildings, and as it is simple and cheap

and permanent it is well fitted for modern use in our climate. The

back of the Science School in Exhibition Road, S. Kensington, was

covered with sgraffiti by the pupils of the late F. W. Moody about

1872. They would be the better now for a cleansing with the modern

steam-blast.

Footnote 231:

See the Notes on ‘Enriched Façades,’ and ‘Stucco “Grotesques,”’ at the

close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, pp. 298, 299.

Footnote 232:

This passage presents some difficulty. It runs ‘Dunque, quelle che

vanno in campo bianco, non ci essendo il campo di stucco per non

essere bianca la calce, si dà per tutto sottilmente il campo di

bianco.’ Vasari seems to have in his mind the difference between

ordinary plaster made, as he has just described, of ‘lime mixed with

sand in the ordinary fashion,’ which would not be white, and what he

calls ‘stucco,’ by which term is probably meant the finer plaster made

of white lime from travertine and marble dust. Ordinary plaster has

accordingly to be coated with white before the work begins.

Footnote 233:

Examples of this whimsical style of decoration are abundant in the

Pompeian wall paintings, and the mind of Vitruvius was much exercised

about their frivolity and want of meaning (_De Architectura_, VII, v).

Footnote 234:

Vasari is not very clear in his account of these methods of work, but

it is enough to know that both by the ancients, and at the time of the

Renaissance, colour was used largely in connection with these reliefs,

and the combination could of course take several forms. In the loggia

of the Villa Farnesina, where Raphael worked with his assistants,

there are painted panels in fresco framed in mouldings of stucco,

modelled plaster figures in white against a coloured ground, coloured

stuccoes against coloured fields, and tinted bands separating the

framed plaster medallions. The same kind of work is found in the

Loggie of the Vatican, the Doria Palace at Genoa, and other localities

innumerable. Plate XII shows a characteristic section of the

decoration of the Vatican Loggie.

Footnote 235:

As in the work described at the close of ch. XII (the beginning of the

present section).

Footnote 236:

The word ‘bolus’ is derived from the Greek βῶλος, a lump or clod, and

means, according to Murray’s _Dictionary_, a pill, or a small rounded

mass of any substance, and also a kind of reddish clay or earth, used

medically for its astringent properties, that was brought from

Armenia, and called by the pharmacologist ‘bole armeniac.’ Its use in

the arts is due to its unctuous character, which made gold adhere to

it. See below. In mediaeval illuminations a ‘bolus’ or small lump of a

properly prepared gesso is generally laid on the parchment where gold

is to come, so that the raised surface may give the polished metal

more effect. The gold over the bolus was always burnished. It may be

noticed that our word ‘size’ is really ‘assise,’ the bed or layer

under gilding, for which a gluey substance was suitable.

Footnote 237:

A ‘mordant’ as the word implies is some corrosive liquid, such as is

used by dyers to bite into the fabric and carry in with it the

colouring matter. The word is also employed, as in this passage, for a

glutinous size used as ground for gilding, such as the modern

decorator’s ‘gold-size.’ Gold laid in this way has a ‘mat’ surface.

Footnote 238:

The scudo was worth in Tuscany about four-and-sixpence of our money.

In Florence its value was a little greater.

Footnote 239:

See Note 1, ante, p. 248.

Footnote 240:

For the various processes of preparing a panel for painting and for

gilding reference must be made to Cennini’s _Trattato_, where many

technical matters are elucidated that Vasari passes over almost

without notice. It must be remembered that Cennini writes as a tempera

painter, while in Vasari’s time these elaborate processes were falling

out of use. In his chapters 115–119, Cennini gives recipes for what he

calls ‘gesso grosso’ and ‘gesso sottile.’ They are made of the same

materials, ‘volterrano,’ or plaster from Volterra, which is a sulphate

of lime corresponding to our ‘plaster of Paris,’ and size made from

parchment shreds; but the plaster for ‘gesso sottile’ is more finely

prepared. The plaster, produced by calcining gypsum, is first

thoroughly slaked by being drenched with water till it loses all

tendency to ‘set,’ and is then as a powder or paste mixed with the

heated size. The size makes the composition dry quite hard, and

Cennini speaks of its having a surface like ivory.

Footnote 241:

See Note 2, ante, p. 248.

Footnote 242:

This we should call ‘shell gold.’ It is in common use. The employment

of the shell represents a very ancient tradition, for shells were the

usual receptacles for pigments in late classical and Early Christian

times.

Footnote 243:

This is excellent advice. The architectural character of mosaic

decoration, the distance of the work from the eye, the nature of the

technique and material, all invite to a broad and simple treatment,

such as we find in the best mosaics at Ravenna and Rome. Modern work

is often too elaborate and too minute in detail.

Footnote 244:

A modern would say that if the work be really inlaid, it should look

like inlaid work, and not like something else. In the Italy of

Vasari’s day however, as we have seen, painting had so thoroughly got

the upper hand, that to ape the nobler art would seem a legitimate

ambition for the mosaicist.

Footnote 245:

The durability of mosaic depends on the cement in which the cubes are

embedded and on the care taken in their setting. The pieces themselves

are indestructible but they will sometimes drop out from the wall.

Hence extensive restorations have been carried out on the Early

Christian mosaics at Ravenna and other places.

Footnote 246:

In his _Proemio delle Vite_ (_Opere_, I, 242) Vasari explains what he

means by the words ‘antique’ and ‘old.’ The former refers to the

so-called ‘classical’ epoch before Constantine; the latter to the

Early Christian and early mediaeval period, prior to the Italian

revival of the thirteenth century.

Footnote 247:

At S. Costanza (see Note 5, ante, p. 27) on the vault of the aisle

there are decorative mosaics of the time of Constantine showing vine

scrolls issuing out of vases, and classical genii gathering the

grapes. Birds are introduced among the tendrils.

Footnote 248:

The mosaics at Ravenna and S. Marco, Venice, are well known. In the

Duomo at Pisa, in the apse, there still remains the Saviour in Glory

between the Madonna and John the Baptist, designed by a certain

Cimabue, and the only existing work which modern criticism would

accept as from the hand of the traditional father of Florentine

painting. It may however have been another painter nicknamed

‘Cimabue,’ who worked at Pisa early in the fourteenth century. The

mosaics of the Tribune of the Baptistry at Florence were executed in

1225 by Jacobus, a monk of the Franciscan Order, and this fact is

attested by an inscription in mosaic which forms part of the work.

Footnote 249:

This mosaic, called the ‘Navicella,’ represents the Gospel ship manned

by Christ and the disciples, with Peter struggling in the waves. It

has been so much restored that little if any of Giotto’s work remains

in it. It was replaced in the seventeenth century, after some

wanderings, in the porch of the present Basilica, but Vasari saw it of

course in the porch of the old, or Constantinian, church, the entrance

end of which was still standing in his day.

Footnote 250:

This mosaic was executed at the end of the fifteenth century by

Domenico Ghirlandajo and his brother over the northern door of the

nave of the cathedral of Florence. It is still _in situ_ but has been

greatly restored. The date 1490 is introduced in the composition.

Footnote 251:

This corresponds with modern practice. The following is from a paper

by Mr James C. Powell, who, as practical worker in glass, has been

engaged with Sir W. B. Richmond in the decoration in mosaic of the

vaults of St Paul’s. ‘The glass which is rendered opaque by the

addition of oxide of tin, is coloured as required by one of the

metallic oxides; this is melted in crucibles placed in the furnace,

and when sufficiently fused is ladled out in small quantities on to a

metal table, and pressed into circular cakes about eight inches in

diameter and from three-eighths to half an inch in thickness; these

are then cooled gradually in a kiln, and when cold are ready for

cracking up into tesserae, which can be further subdivided as the

mosaicist requires. It is the fractured surface that is used in mosaic

generally, as that has a pleasanter surface and a greater richness of

colour; the thickness of the cake, therefore, regulates the limit of

the size of the tesserae, and the fractured surface gives that

roughness of texture which is so valuable from an artistic point of

view.’ (_Transactions_, _R.I.B.A._, 1893–4, p. 249).

Footnote 252:

This is a point attended to by the best modern workers in mosaic.

Where gold backgrounds are used it is advisable to carry the gold into

the figures by using it as Vasari suggests for the lights on the

draperies. If this were not done the figures would be liable to tell

as dull masses against the more brilliant ground. The use of gold

backgrounds is specially Byzantine. The earlier mosaics at Rome and at

Ravenna have backgrounds of blue generally of a dark shade, which is

particularly fine at Ss. Cosma e Damiano at Rome and in the tomb of

Galla Placidia at Ravenna. The mosaics at S. Sophia at Constantinople

of the sixth century had gold backgrounds, and this is the case also

with all the later examples in Italy from the ninth and tenth

centuries onwards. The finest displays of these varied fields of gold,

now deep now lustrous of hue, are to be seen in S. Sophia, S. Marco at

Venice, and the Cappella Palatina at Palermo.

Vasari’s account of the fabrication of the gilded tesserae required

for this part of the work is quite clear and agrees with modern

practice. The gold leaf is hermetically sealed between two sheets of

glass by the fusion of a thin film over it. The technique of the

‘fondi d’ oro,’ or glass vessels adorned with designs in gold, found

in the Roman catacombs, was of the same nature.

Footnote 253:

It has been noticed at some places, as at Torcello, that before the

cubes were laid in the soft cement the whole design was washed in in

colour on the surface of the cement. This facilitated correct setting

and avoided any appearance of white cement squeezed up in the

interstices between the cubes. On this particular feature of the

mosaic technique Berger has founded an ingenious theory of the origin

of painting in fresco. It is his thesis, in his _Beiträge zur

Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Maltechnik_, I, München, 1904, that the

ancients did not employ the fresco process, but that this was evolved

in early mediaeval days out of the mosaic technique as seen, _e.g._,

at Torcello. The stucco, that Vasari describes, must be put on portion

by portion, for it only keeps soft two or three days, and can only be

used for setting the cubes while in a moist state. Now, Berger

contends, if the design for the mosaic be painted in colours on the

wet stucco, and the whole allowed to dry, without any use of the

mosaic cubes, we should have a painting in fresco, and he imagines

that fresco painting began in this way. Unfortunately for the theory,

(1), the testimony of Vitruvius and Pliny is absolutely decisive in

favour of the knowledge in antiquity of the fresco technique, and,

(2), the use of the coloured painting on the stucco as a guide for the

setting of the cubes was not normal, and can never have been used so

freely as to give rise to a new technique of painting. As a fact, this

colouring of the stucco is objected to by the best modern workers on

aesthetic grounds, for they point out that the lines of grey cement

between the coloured cubes answer to the lead lines in the stained

glass window, and should be reckoned with by the designer as part of

his artistic effect. No doubt the older mosaicists, like the workers

in stained glass, instinctively apprehended this, and had no desire

for the coloured cement.

Footnote 254:

One would expect here ‘lime of travertine,’ for what Vasari must mean

is lime prepared by burning this stone, which he recommends elsewhere,

_e.g._ ‘Architettura,’ cap. iv, and ‘Scultura,’ cap. vi (calce di

trevertino). The cement here given is a lime cement mixed with water.

A sort of putty mixed with boiled oil is also employed, and is said to

have been introduced by Girolamo Muziano of Brescia, a contemporary of

Vasari. Each mosaic worker seems to have his own special recipe for

this compound.

Footnote 255:

The process described by Vasari of building up the mosaic _in situ_,

tessera by tessera, according to the design pounced portion by portion

on the soft cement, is the most direct and by far the most artistic,

and was employed for all the fine mosaics of olden time. In modern

days labour-saving appliances have been tried, though it is

satisfactory to know that they are all again discarded in the best

work of to-day, such as that of Sir W. B. Richmond in St. Paul’s. One

of the methods referred to, which can be carried out in the studio, is

to take a reversed tracing of the design, covered with gum, and place

the cubes face downwards upon it according to the colour scheme. When

they are all in position, as far as can be judged when working from

the back, a coating of cement is laid over them and they are thus

fixed in their places. The whole sheet is then lifted up and cemented

in its proper place on the wall, the drawing to which the faces of the

cubes are gummed being afterwards removed by wetting. A better plan

than this is called by the Italians ‘Mosaico a rivoltatura.’ For this

process the tesserae are laid, face upwards, in a bed of pozzolana,

slightly damp, which forms a temporary joint between the adjacent

cubes. Coarse canvas is pasted over the face of the work; it is lifted

up, and the pozzolana brushed out of the interstices. The whole is

then applied to the wall surface and pressed into the cement with

which this has been coated. When the cement has set the canvas is

removed from the face.

Footnote 256:

The Duomo of Siena is a veritable museum of floor decorations in

incised outlines and in black and white, in the various processes

described by Vasari. There is a good notice of them in Labarte,

_Histoire des Arts Industriels_. None of the work is as early as the

time of Duccio, but Beccafumi executed a large amount of it. See the

Life of that artist by Vasari.

It is worthy of notice that Dante had something of this kind in his

thoughts, when in the 12th Canto of the _Purgatorio_ he describes the

figure designs on the ground of the first circle of Purgatory.

‘So saw I there ...

... with figures covered

Whate’er of pathway from the mount projects.

· · · · ·

O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes

Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced,

Between thy seven and seven children slain!

O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword

Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa

That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew!

· · · · ·

Whoe’er of pencil master was or stile,

That could portray the shades and traits which there

Would cause each subtle genius to admire?

Dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive;

Better than I saw not who saw the truth,

All that I trod upon while bowed I went.’

Longfellow’s Translation.

Footnote 257:

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

Footnote 258:

The Appartamento Borgia still contains a good display of these

variegated tiles; the original ones are however rather the worse for

wear. In the Life of Raphael, Vasari says they were supplied by the

della Robbia of Florence. In the Castle of S. Angelo there is a

collection of interesting specimens of the tiles Vasari goes on to

mention. They are in cases in the Sala della Giustizia, and exhibit

the devices of Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, Paul III, and other

Popes. The pavement of the Laurentian Library at Florence is laid with

tiles showing a very effective design of yellow upon red. They are

ascribed to Tribolo.

Footnote 259:

Was this the road from Seravezza seawards which Michelangelo had

begun? See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ ante, p. 119. Specimens

of these Stazzema breccias are shown as C, D, on the Frontispiece.

Footnote 260:

Lat. _Evonymus Europaeus_. The only English example of the family is

the spindle tree.

Footnote 261:

The Lemonnier editors say that this work is lost. Of course Vasari is

speaking of the Old St. Peter’s, not the present structure.

Footnote 262:

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

Salviati (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, VII).

Footnote 263:

Inlays of different coloured woods, forming what is known as tarsia

work, and sometimes as marqueterie, compose an easily understood kind

of decoration that has been practised especially in the East from time

immemorial. There is however a special interest attaching to this work

in the Italy of the fifteenth century, in that it was connected with

the studies in perspective that had so potent an influence on the

general artistic progress of the time. For some reason that is not

clearly apparent the designs for this work often took the form of

buildings and city views in perspective, and artists amused themselves

in working out in this form problems in that indispensable science.

The history of the craft is so instructive that it is worth a special

Note, which the reader will find at the end of this ‘Introduction,’

postea, p. 303.

Footnote 264:

‘The onyx marbles of Algeria, Mexico, and California (which are of the

same nature as the Oriental alabasters) can be cut and ground

sufficiently thin for window purposes’ (Mr W. Brindley in

_Transactions_, _R.I.B.A._, 1887, p. 53). See also ante, p. 43.

Footnote 265:

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

which are still to be seen surviving in cottage windows. The ‘bull’s

eye’ pane was the middle part of a sheet of so-called ‘crown’ glass

where was attached the iron rod or tube with which the mass of molten

glass was extracted from the furnace, before, by rotation of the rod,

it was spread out into the form of a sheet. When the rod was

ultimately detached a knob remained, and this part of the sheet was

used for glazing as a cheap ‘waste product.’ In connection with the

modern revival in domestic architecture, for which Mr Norman Shaw

deserves a good deal of the credit, these rough panes have come again

into fashion, and manufacturers make them specially and supply them at

the price of an artistic luxury! In Vasari’s time they were evidently

quite common, and we find numerous specimens represented in the

pictures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The bedroom of S.

Ursula in Carpaccio’s picture at Venice; the cell of S. Jerome in

Dürer’s engraving; the room in which van Eyck paints Arnolfini and his

wife, those in which Jost Amman’s ‘Handworkers’ are busy, etc., etc.,

have casements glazed in this fashion, the knob, called in English

‘bullion,’ in French ‘boudine,’ in German ‘Butzen,’ being distinctly

represented as in relief.

Footnote 266:

The ‘telajo di legno’ is a window frame of wood such as we are

familiar with in modern days, only in olden times these were often

made detachable and taken about from place to place when lords and

ladies changed their domicile. When Julius II wanted Bramante to fill

some windows of the Vatican with coloured glass, it was found that the

French ambassador to the Papal court had brought a painted window in

such a frame from his own country, and the sight of this led to the

invitation to Rome of French artists in this material. See _infra_,

Note 5.

Footnote 267:

See Note on ‘The Stained Glass Window’ at the close of this

‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 308.

Footnote 268:

Vasari wrote the life of this artist, who had been his own teacher in

early years at Arezzo (_Opere_, IV, 417). Gaye, _Carteggio_, II, 449,

gives documentary evidence that he was the son of a certain Pierre de

Marcillat, and was born at S. Michel in the diocese of Verdun in

France. His name therefore has nothing to do with Marseilles, which

moreover is not in a glass-painting locality, whereas Verdun, between

France and Germany, is just in the region where the art was developed

and flourished. Guglielmo and another Frenchman named Claude came to

Rome about 1508 in the circumstances described in the foregoing Note,

and made some windows for the Sala Regia of the Vatican and other

parts of the Palace. These have all perished, but there still survive

two windows from their hands in the choir of S. Maria del Popolo, on

which are the name and arms of Pope Julius II. They are placed north

and south behind and above the high altar, and have each three lights.

They contain scenes from the lives of Christ and the Madonna, in which

the figures are carefully drawn but the colour is patchy. Though the

reds are clear and strong, there is a good deal of grey and the

architectural backgrounds are rather muddy in hue. The artist was

invited from Rome to Cortona and from thence to Arezzo, which as

Vasari notices in the beginning of his Life remained his home to the

end. He executed many windows there, in the cathedral and in S.

Francesco, some of which still remain; and also works in fresco.

Vasari declares that he owed to his teaching the first principles of

art.

On the whole subject of the glass-painting craft see the Note on ‘The

Stained Glass Window,’ postea, p. 308, where the curious confusion of

two different processes, between which Vasari’s treatment oscillates,

is elucidated.

Footnote 269:

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

explained in the Note, postea, p. 308.

Footnote 270:

It is somewhat remarkable that the Venetians, who practised the art of

glass mosaic from about the ninth century, and in the thirteenth began

their famous glass works, never achieved anything in the technique of

the stained glass window. Venetian glass vessels, like the glorious

lamps from the Cairo Mosques, owe much of their beauty to the fact

that the material is not clarified but possesses a beautiful warm

tone. It is indeed more difficult to get clear glass than tinted.

Footnote 271:

For the most part this description, with the exception of the part

about scaling-off glass in order to introduce a variety in colour,

corresponds closely with the technical directions which Theophilus

gives so fully and clearly in his _Schedula Diversarum Artium_ of

about 1100 A.D. It is pretty clear that Vasari is telling us here what

he learned from William of Marcillat who would have inherited the

traditions of the great French glass-painters of the thirteenth

century.

Footnote 272:

The ‘scaglia’ is the thin scale that comes off heated iron when

cooling under the hammer, and is collected from the floors of

smithies. Vasari thinks of it as a ‘rust’ ‘ruggine,’ because rusty

iron scales off in much the same way, the cause in both cases probably

being oxidization. Hence the expression ‘another rust.’

Footnote 273:

The pigments or pastes that are to be fused on to the coloured glass,

to modify its hue or to indicate details, are powdered and mixed with

gum for convenience in application. The gum is not to serve as

permanent binding material as the pastes are subsequently fused and

burnt in on the glass.

Footnote 274:

It will be understood that the glass subjected to this treatment is

not coloured in the mass, or what is called ‘pot-metal,’ but has a

film of colour ‘flashed’ or spread thinly on a clear sheet. This is

done with certain colours, such as the admired ruby red, because a

piece coloured in the mass would be too opaque for effect. Economy may

also be a consideration, as the ruby stain is a product of gold.

Footnote 275:

The composition, which when fused stains the glass yellow, may before

fusion be of a red hue. As a rule the yellow stain on glass is

produced by silver. Vasari does not say what his composition is.

Footnote 276:

The red film is what Vasari understands by the ‘painting.’ This might

fuse and run with the heat required to fuse the yellow.

Footnote 277:

That is, the space where the yellow leaf is to come may be cleared of

the red film _after_ the yellow leaf has been painted on the back, as

well as _before_ that process. The process Vasari describes of

introducing small details of a particular colour into a field of

another hue is a good deal employed by modern workers in glass, but it

was not known to Theophilus, or much used in the palmy days of the

art, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Footnote 278:

In Theophilus’s time these convenient leads grooved on both sides,

which are still in use, were not invented. He directs the worker to

bind strips of lead round each piece of glass and then solder together

the leads when the pieces so bound are brought into juxtaposition.

Footnote 279:

‘Niello’ is from the mediaeval Latin ‘nigellum,’ ‘black,’ and refers

to the black composition with which engraved lines in metal plates

were filled, according to the process detailed by Vasari.

Footnote 280:

It is curious that the chapter ends without any discussion of the

chasing of gold and silver plate.

Footnote 281:

To some small extent the ancients do seem to have filled the engraved

lines in their bronze or silver plates with colouring matter, and the

known examples are described in Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des

Antiquités_, art. ‘Chrysographia,’ p. 1138. Pliny, _Hist. Nat._,

XXXIII, 46, gives a recipe, as used by the Egyptians, for a material

for colouring silver that corresponds with the composition used for

niello work, though the use he indicates seems rather that of an

artificial _patina_ than a filling for incisions. In any case the use

of such a filling in antiquity was quite uncommon, for the innumerable

incised designs on the backs of Greek and Etruscan mirrors and on

caskets like the Ficeronian Cista show no indication of the process,

though of course in the lapse of time the incisions have acquired a

darker tinge than the smooth surfaces of the metal, and Vasari may

have seen them filled with accidental impurities.

Footnote 282:

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

Footnote 283:

Vasari makes no mention here of sulphur, which in the recipes given by

Pliny, Theophilus, and Cellini, is a constant constituent of the black

amalgam. Silver and lead alone would not give the black required.

Footnote 284:

The ‘Pax,’ Italian ‘pace,’ was a little tablet of metal or some other

material used in churches to transmit the kiss of peace from the

priest to the people. Certain paxes once in the Baptistry of Florence

have now found their way through the Uffizi to the Museum in the

Bargello, but experts are not agreed as to the ascription of

particular examples to Finiguerra. See Milanesi’s note on this artist

at the close of Vasari’s Life of Marc Antonio Raimondi (_Opere_, V,

443).

Footnote 285:

In Vasari’s first edition, of 1550, there is a notice of Finiguerra in

the Life of Antonio Pollaiuolo (p. 498) and he there celebrates only

the skill of Maso as a niellist, but in the edition of 1568 there is

another notice of him in connection with Marc Antonio (_Opere_, ed.

Milanesi, V, 395), and here Vasari claims for him the credit of being

the first to make the advance from niello work to copper-plate

engraving. This second passage is a famous one, and describes how

Finiguerra moulded his silver plate, incised with a design, in clay,

and then cast it in sulphur, and subsequently filled the hollow lines

in the sulphur cast (which reproduced the incisions on the silver

plate) with lamp-black, so that they showed up more clearly. He then

seems, according to Vasari, to have pressed damp paper against the

sulphur plaque so treated, and obtained a print by extracting the

black from the lines. Benvenuto Cellini however, a better authority

than Vasari on Finiguerra, praises him as the best niello worker of

his time, but says nothing about this further development of his

craft, and on the contrary ascribes the invention of copper-plate

engraving to the Germans. Cellini tells us at the end of his

‘Introduzione,’ that in 1515, when fifteen years old, he began to

learn the goldsmith’s trade, and that then, though the art of niello

work had greatly declined, the older goldsmiths sang in his ears the

praise of Maso Finiguerra, who had died in 1464. Hence, Cellini says,

he gave special attention to niello work, and he describes the

process, at rather greater length than Vasari, in the first chapter of

his _Treatise_ on Gold-work (_I Trattati, etc. di Benvenuto Cellini_,

ed. Milanesi, Firenze, 1893).

The question of the origin of copper-plate engraving need not be here

discussed. Any of the incised silver or bronze plaques of the ancients

might have been printed from; and as a fact some incised bronze discs

that are placed at the bottoms of the towers in the great crown-light

of the twelfth century in the Minster at Aachen have actually been put

through the printing press and the impressions published, though no

one at the time they were made can have thought of printing from them.

In the same way wooden stamps in relief were used by Egyptians and

Romans for impressing the damp clay of their bricks, though no one

seems to have thought of multiplying impressions on papyrus or

parchment. So trial impressions of niello plates, before the lines

were filled in permanently, may often have been made, and not by

Finiguerra alone. The idea of multiplying such impressions on their

own account is now universally credited to the Germans, and this seems

also to have been the opinion of Cellini. See his ‘Introduzione.’

Footnote 286:

That is to say, the bottoms of cups or chalices. There are notices of

armorial insignia, enamelled at the bottom of cups of gold used by

some of the French kings, in Labarte, _Histoire des Arts Industriels_.

Footnote 287:

Giulio: a piece coined under Pope Julius II, of the same value as the

‘paolo,’ and equivalent to 56 centesimi, or about 5½d. of our money.

Footnote 288:

That is, the outlines of the different figures, ornaments, or other

objects executed in low relief on the metal. See the Note on ‘Vasari’s

Description of Enamel Work’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to

Painting, postea, p. 311.

Footnote 289:

‘The other kind’ probably refers to the incisions on the niello plates

of which he has been speaking. These are hollow, or in intaglio,

whereas the work he is here describing is in relief.

Footnote 290:

‘Si fermino col martello.’ The only practicable use of the hammer in

connection with enamels is to pound the lumps of vitreous paste to a

more or less fine powder, in which form they are placed over the

metal. Theophilus, in chapter 53 of his third Book, ‘de Electro,’ ‘on

Enamel,’ introduces the hammer in a similar connection: ‘Accipiensque

singulas probati vitri ... quod mox confringas cum rotundo malleo

donec subtile fiat;’ ‘take portions of the glass you have tested ...

and break up each lump with a round headed hammer till it be finely

powdered.’ Cellini also says the pastes are to be pounded in a mortar

‘con martello.’ _Trattati_, p. 30. It is not easy however to see how

any sense of ‘pounding’ can be extracted from the verb ‘fermare’ which

Vasari uses.

Footnote 291:

The difference in colour between gold and silver will naturally affect

the choice of the transparent vitreous pastes that are to cover them,

and there are also considerations of a chemical kind which prevent the

use of certain pastes on certain metal grounds. For example tin has

the property of rendering transparent enamels opaque, and transparent

pastes cannot be used over metal grounds wherein tin enters into the

composition. Cellini, who gives the same caution as Vasari, takes as

an illustration transparent ruby coloured enamel, which he says cannot

be used over silver, for a reason which has about it a reminiscence of

the ancient alchemy, namely, that it is a product of gold and must be

employed only over its kindred metal! On the other hand he forbids for

use with gold yellow, white, and turquoise blue. We are indebted for

some special information on this highly technical subject to the

kindness of Mr H. H. Cunynghame, C.B., who writes: ‘There are two

distinct reasons why different enamels are used on silver and gold

respectively. The first is an artistic reason. Transparent reds do not

show well over silver, the rays reflected from a silver surface not

being well calculated to show off the colours of the gold. In fact

silver absorbs those rays on the transmission of which the beauty of

gold-red largely depends, whence then it follows that transparent

blues and greens should be used on silver, and reds, browns, and the

brighter yellows on gold. In addition to this, silver has its surface

disturbed by the silicic acid in the enamel. The consequence is that

ordinary enamels put on a silver surface are stained. To prevent this

it is desirable to add some ingredient that dissolves and renders

colourless the stain. For this purpose therefore special fluxes or

clear enamels are made for silver. They usually contain manganese and

arsenic. The first of these has such a property of “clarifying”

enamels and glazes that it used to be called the potter’s “soap,” for

it cleaned the glazes on china. The other is also used for the same

purpose.... As silver alloy is more easy to melt than gold alloy,

fluxes, i.e. clear enamels for silver, are much more fusible than

those for gold.’

Footnote 292:

This is a practice of modern enamellers. Cellini however is against

it, as if the enamels begin again to run there is a danger of losing

the truth of the surface. He recommends polishing by hand alone

(_Trattati_, ed. Milanesi, 35).

Footnote 293:

This may have been the so-called Venetian enamel used in Vasari’s

time. This was a form of opaque painted enamel over copper, extremely

decorative, but coarse as compared with the translucent enamel over

reliefs. We owe this suggestion to Sir T. Gibson Carmichael.

Footnote 294:

The word ‘Tausia,’ and its connection with ‘Tarsia,’ the term used for

wood inlays, has given rise to some discussion. The explanation in

Bucher’s _Geschichte der Technischen Künste_, III, 14, is probably

correct, and according to this the Italian ‘Tausia’ comes from the

Spanish ‘Tauscia’ or ‘Atauscia,’ which is derived from an Arabic root

meaning ‘to decorate.’ The art of inlaying one metal in another is one

of great antiquity in the East, and was no doubt brought to Spain by

the Moors, from which country, perhaps by way of Sicily, it spread to

Italy. The word ‘Tarsia,’ applied as we have already seen to inlays in

wood, may have been derived by corruption from ‘Tausia,’ though, as

the form ‘Intarsia’ is also common, a derivation (unlikely) has been

suggested from the Latin ‘Interserere.’ The ‘in’ is probably only the

preposition, that has become incorporated with the word it preceded.

Footnote 295:

‘Cavasi il ferro in sotto squadra.’

Footnote 296:

If the sinkings be undercut the further process of roughening the sunk

surfaces is hardly necessary, but the roughening or puncturing may

suffice to hold the inlaid metal when there is no actual undercutting

of the sides of the sinkings.

Footnote 297:

The ‘filiera,’ or iron plate pierced with holes of various sizes for

drawing wires through, was known to Theophilus. See chapter 8 of Book

III of the _Schedula_, ‘_De ferris per quae fila trahuntur_.’

Footnote 298:

Vasari does not attempt to deal with the art of wood engraving in

general nor need this Note traverse the whole subject. In all these

later chapters of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting he is dealing with

forms of the decorative art in which various materials are put

together so as to produce something of the effect of a picture. Hence

all that he envisages in the department of wood engraving are what are

called chiaroscuri, or engravings meant to produce the effect of

shaded drawings by tints rather than by the lines which constitute

engravings proper. It has been noticed that some writers on engraving,

(ante, p. 20) have denied to these imitated light-and-shade drawings

the character of true engravings.

As we have seen to be the case with copper-plate engraving (ante, p.

275) priority is now claimed in these chiaroscuri for Germany over

Italy, and Ugo da Carpi, who was born about 1450, near Bologna,

becomes rather the improver of a German process than the inventor of a

new one. On July 24, 1516, when resident in Venice he petitions the

Signoria of that city for privilege for his ‘new method of printing in

light and shade, a novel thing and not done before.’ Lippmann (_The

Art of Wood Engraving in Italy in the Fifteenth Century_, trans.,

London, 1888) thinks that this claim may be true ‘in so far as he may

have introduced further developments in the practice of colour

printing with several blocks, which still survived in Venice,

especially after the production of coloured wood-cuts by Burgkmair and

Cranach in Germany had given fresh stimulus to a more artistic

cultivation of that method’ (p. 69), and that ‘he gave the art an

entirely new development based upon the principles which guided the

profession of painting’ (p. 136). This last phrase explains the

interest that Vasari here manifests in his work. In the older wood

engraving only lines had been left on the block to take the ink, the

rest of the surface being cut away, and whatever was to be shown in

the print was displayed in the lines alone. In the new method broad

surfaces of the wood were left, on which was spread a film of ink or

pigment, and these printed a corresponding tint upon the paper which

took off the film thus laid. The pigment might be of any colour

desired, or might only represent a lighter tint of the ink that had

been used all along for the lines. Hence either an effect of colour or

one merely of gradations of light and shade could equally well be

produced by the process Vasari describes. The work he contemplates is

of the latter kind, and his explanation of the process by which it was

produced is fairly clear. Plate XIV, from a print by Ugo da Carpi in

the British Museum, gives a specimen of the result.

Critics of Ugo da Carpi’s work, which is sufficiently abundant, notice

that he begins by merely adding tints of shading to outlines, which as

in the earlier productions of the Germans, like those of Cranach or

Dienecker, remained substantially responsible for the effect; but that

he gives more and more importance to the tints, the pictorial element

in the design, till the outlines end by merely reinforcing the

chiaroscuro, like the touches ‘a tempera’ that give effect and

decision to painting in fresco (Kristeller, _Kupferstich und

Holzschnitt in vier Jahrhunderten_, Berlin, 1905, p. 300).

Footnote 299:

That is, he made three blocks A, B, C, each the full size of the

design, but each containing only a part of the work. A has engraved on

it all the _lines_ of the design, and a print from it would be an

old-fashioned engraving proper. Such a print with the ink on it still

wet is pressed down on a clean block of wood, on which it leaves

indications of all these lines. The broad tints of shading, in which

gradations may be introduced, are then laid on the block by hand, the

outlines being a guide, and so is constituted block B, an impression

from which printed on a sheet already printed from block A, and made

to register accurately with this, would add shading to the outlines. C

would add by the same process a third tint, quite flat, for the

background, and this might of course be of another colour. The high

lights would be cut away in this block, C, and these parts come out

white in the print, as is seen on Plate XIV. The uniform grey shade on

the Plate is the background tint. In the actual process of printing

this block, C, is first put into the press and produces an impression

showing the tinted background but white spaces where the high lights

are to come. B, with the shadows tinted but all the rest of the wood

cut away, is printed over the impression from C, and lastly A comes to

give the decided lines and sharpen up the whole effect.

Footnote 300:

The ‘oil colour’ is the pigment which is transferred from the block to

the paper. The ‘water colour’ and the ‘white lead mixed with gum’

mentioned above are only put on by the artist to guide the wood-cutter

in his work of cutting the block.

Footnote 301:

The text, in both the original editions, runs as follows: ‘E la terza

che è la prima a formarsi, è quella dove il profilato del tutto è

incavato per tutto, salvo che dove e’ non ha i profili tocchi dal nero

della penna,’ and the negative is puzzling, for obviously the wood

must be cut away everywhere but in those places where the outlines do

come.

Footnote 302:

But Theophilus says practically nothing about design, and yet the

mediaeval epoch was for the decorative arts one of the most glorious

the world has ever seen. See on this subject the last part of the

Introductory Essay, ante, p. 20 f.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

2. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

3. Enclosed bold or blackletter font in =equals=.

4. Used a caret (^) to indicate superscripts, including single

characters like 2^d or entire phrases like 1^{st}.