Chapter XIII: of Charles Heath Wilson’s Life and Works of Michelangelo (4)

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: