INDEX

For buildings and permanent monuments at Florence, Rome, etc., see under the names of the respective cities.

The references are to pages. The upright numerals refer to the text, the sloping ones to the commentary.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

[1]. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, London, 1903, 1, p. 18, says that Vasari ‘was an indifferent connoisseur and a poor historian; but he was a great appreciator ... and a passionate anecdote-monger. Now the Anecdote must have sharp contrasts....’

[2]. The materials for our knowledge of Vasari and his works are derived from his own Autobiography and his notes on himself in the Lives of other artists, as well as from the Ragionamenti and from the Letters, printed by Milanesi in the eighth volume of the Sansoni edition of Vasari’s writings, or previously printed by Gaye in the third volume of the Carteggio.

[3]. Before Vasari published his Lives, at least eight editions of Vitruvius had appeared. The Editio Princeps, ‘curante Jo. Sulpitio Verulano,’ is believed to have been issued at Rome about 1486, and in 1496 and 1497 reprints were published at Florence and at Venice. In 1511 appeared the important edition, with emendations and illustrations, by the famous architect Fra Giocondo of Verona, and this was reprinted in the Giunta edition at Florence in 1513. Other editions saw the light in 1522, 1523, 1543, and 1550. An Italian translation was published in 1521, a French one in 1547, and in 1548 one in German. The reverence of the architects of the Renaissance for Vitruvius was unbounded, and Michelangelo is said to have remarked that if a man could draw he would be able by the help of Vitruvius to become a good architect.

[4]. Leon Battista Alberti shares with Brunelleschi the distinction of representing in its highest form the artistic culture of the early age of Humanism. His principal work De Re Aedificatoria, or, as it is also called, De Architectura, was published after his death, in 1485. It is divided, like the work of Vitruvius, into ten books, and is an exceedingly comprehensive treatise on the architectural art both in theory and practice, and on the position of architecture in relation to civilization and to society at large. It is written in a noble and elevated style, and, as the title implies, in Latin. It was translated into Italian by Bartoli and into English by J. Leoni (three volumes, folio, 1726). Alberti also wrote shorter tracts on Sculpture and Painting, as well as other works of a less specially artistic order.

[5]. See Note on ‘Porphyry and Porphyry Quarries’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 101, and A on the Frontispiece, which gives representations in colour of the stones Vasari mentions in these sections, omitting those familiarly known.

[6]. If a stone be comparatively soft when quarried and become harder after exposure to the air, this is due to the elimination in the air of moisture that it held when in the earth. In a dry climate like that of Egypt there is little or no moisture for stones to hold, and the Egyptian porphyry, Mr W. Brindley reports, is quite as hard when freshly quarried as after exposure. Vasari repeats this remark when he is dealing with granite in § 6, postea, p. 41. He has derived it from Alberti, who in De Architectura, bk. II, ch. vii, notices perfectly correctly that the question is one of the comparative amount of moisture in the stone.

[7]. ‘Temple of Bacchus’ was the name given at the Renaissance to the memorial chapel containing the tomb of Constantia, daughter of Constantine the Great, on the Via Nomentana close to S. Agnese, and now known as S. Costanza. The name was suggested by the mosaics with vintage scenes on the barrel vault of the aisle, which are of great interest and beauty. In Vasari’s time this still contained the porphyry sarcophagus where Constantia was laid, and of this he goes on to speak. In 1788 Pius VI transferred it to his new Sala a Croce Greca in the Vatican, where it now stands.

[8]. This is the second of the two vast cubical porphyry sarcophagi in the Croce Greca, and it is believed that it served once to contain the mortal remains of Helena, mother of Constantine. It is much finer in execution than the other, and exhibits a large number of figures in high relief, though incoherently composed. The subject may be the victories of Constantine. It was originally in the monument called ‘Torre Pignattara,’ the supposed mausoleum of Helena on the Via Labicana, and was transported in the twelfth century by Anastatius IV to the Lateran, whence Pius VI had it transferred to the Vatican. The restoration of these huge sarcophagi cost an immense amount in money and time. Massi (Museo Pio-Clementino, Roma, 1846, p. 157) states that the second one absorbed the labour of twenty-five artificers, who worked at it day and night for the space of nine years. Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, 1901, notices the sarcophagi.

[9]. Urns, or, as the Italians called them, ‘conche,’ of porphyry, basalt, granite and marble existed in great abundance in the Roman Thermae where they were used for bathing purposes. From the seventh century onwards the Christians adopted these for sepulchral use and placed them in the churches, where many of them are still to be seen (Lanciani, Storia degli Scavi, Roma, 1902, I, 3, and Marangoni, Delle Cose Gentilesche, etc., Roma, 1744). Hence Vasari speaks of the porphyry urn of the Piazza della Rotonda (the Pantheon) as of sepulchral origin, and it was indeed rumoured to have held the ashes of Agrippa, and to have stood once on the apex of the pediment of the Pantheon portico. It was however an ancient bath vessel, and was found when Eugenius IV, 1431–39, first excavated and paved the piazza in front of the Pantheon. It was placed with two Egyptian lions in front of the portico, where it may be seen in the view of the Piazza della Rotonda in G. F. Falda’s Vedute delle Fabbriche, etc., of 1665. Clement XII, 1730–40, who was a Corsini, had it transported for his own sepulchre to the Corsini chapel in the Lateran, where it now stands, with a modern cover. Vasari evidently admired this urn, and he mentions it again in the life of Antonio Rossellino, where he says of the sarcophagus of the monument of the Cardinal of Portugal in S. Miniato, ‘La cassa tiene il garbo di quella di porfido che è in Roma sulla piazza della Ritonda.’ (Opere, ed. Milanesi, III, 95.) See Lanciani, Il Pantheon, etc., Prima Relazione, Roma, 1882, p. 15, where the older authorities are quoted. Of all the bath vases of this kind now visible in Rome, the finest known to the writers is the urn of green porphyry, a rare and beautiful stone, behind the high altar of S. Nicola in Carcere. It is nearly six ft. long, and on each side has two Medusa heads in relief worked in the same piece, with the usual lion’s head on one side at the bottom for egress of water. The workmanship is superb. It may be noted that the existing baptismal font in St. Peter’s, in the first chapel on the left on entering, is the cover of the porphyry sarcophagus of Hadrian turned upside down. It measures 13 ft. in length by 6 ft. in width.

[10]. In chapter VI of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 93, Vasari writes of the ‘casa di Messer Egidio et Fabio Sasso’ as being ‘in Parione.’ See Note at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture on ‘The Sassi, della Valle, and other Collections of Antiques of the early part of the sixteenth century,’ postea, p. 102 f.

[11]. This is the ‘Apollo’ at Naples, No. 6281. See Note as above.

[12]. See Note above mentioned.

[13]. Now lost.

[14]. Now in the Boboli Gardens at Florence. See Note on the Sassi, etc., Collections.

[15]. See Note on ‘The Revival of Sculpture in Porphyry,’ postea, p. 110 f.

[16]. Reciprocating saws of the kind Vasari mentions, mostly of soft steel or iron, and also circular saws, are in use at the present day, the abrasives being emery, or a new material called ‘carborundum.’ This consists in minute crystals of intense hardness gained by fusing by an electric current a mixture of clay and similar substances. See The Times, Engineering Supplement, Oct. 31, 1906.

[17]. It needs hardly to be said that the ancients had no ‘secrets’ such as Vasari hints at. Mr W. Brindley believes that the antique methods of quarrying and working hard stones were ‘precisely the same as our own were until a few years ago,’ that is to say that the blocks were detached from the quarry and split with metal wedges, dressed roughly to shape with large and small picks, and ‘rubbed down with flat stone rubbers and sand, then polished with bronze or copper rubbers with emery powder’ (Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1888, p. 25). At a very early date in Egyptian history, even before the dynastic period, the hardest stones (not excepting porphyry) were successfully manipulated, and vases and bowls of these materials cut with exquisite precision. Professor Flinders Petrie found evidence that at the epoch of the great pyramids tubular drills and bronze saws set with gem-stones (corundum) were employed by the Egyptians in hollowing basalt sarcophagi and cutting the harder stones (The Pyramids and Temples of Ghizeh, London, 1883, p. 173 f.). There is however no evidence of the use of these advanced appliances by the Greeks or Romans. It must not be forgotten that even before the age of metals the neolithic artificers of western Europe could not only cut and bore, but also ornament with patterns, stone hammer-heads of the most intractable materials, with the aid only of pieces of wood twirled or rubbed on the place and plentifully fed with sand and water. The stone axe- and hammer-heads so common in pre-historic collections were bored with tubular drills, made probably from reeds, which cut out a solid core. Such cores can still be seen in partly-pierced hammer-heads in the Museum at Stockholm, and elsewhere.

[18]. Fig. 1 shows the inscription of which Vasari writes and the situation of it on the riser of the step is seen on Plate II. The porphyry slab is 3 ft. 5 in. long and 5½ in. high. The tongues at the ends are in separate pieces. The letters, nineteen not eighteen in number, are close upon 2 in. in height and are cleanly cut with V-shaped incisions. The illustration shows the form of the letters which Vasari justly praises. The name ‘Oricellario’ or -us was derived by the distinguished Florentine family that bore it from the plant Oricello, orchil, which was employed for making a beautiful purple dye, from the importation of which from the Levant the family gained wealth and importance. The shortened popular form of the name ‘Rucellai’ is that by which the family is familiarly known. Giovanni Rucellai gave a commission to Alberti to complete the façade of S. Maria Novella, which was carried out by 1470. The Bernardo Rucellai of the inscription, the son of Giovanni, was known as a historian, and owned the gardens where the Platonic Academy had at one time its place of meeting. Fineschi, in his Forestiero Istruito in S. Maria Novella, Firenze, 1790, says that Bernardo desired to be buried in front of the church and had the inscription cut for sepulchral purposes. The existence of sepulchral ‘avelli’ of distinguished Florentine families at the front of the church makes this seem likely, and in this case the lettering would be after Alberti’s time, though as Fineschi believes, the earliest existing work of the kind in hard stone at Florence. See Rev. J. Wood Brown, S. Maria Novella, Edinburgh, 1902, p. 114.

[19]. After the fashion of an ordinary carpenter’s ‘brace.’

[20]. See Note on ‘The Porphyry Tazza of the Sala Rotonda of the Vatican,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 108.

[21]. See Note at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 110 f., on ‘Francesco del Tadda and, the Revival of Sculpture in Porphyry.’

[22]. About 4 ft. 9 in. In a letter of May 1557 in Gaye, Carteggio, II, 419, Vasari mentions the work as nearly finished.

[23]. The palace in question is the well-known Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, which was adapted for the Grand-ducal residence largely by Vasari himself under the Grand Dukes Cosimo and his successor Francesco. The fountain is the one at present in the courtyard of the palace, carrying the beautiful bronze figure of a boy with a dolphin, by Verrocchio. This ‘putto’ was brought in from the famous Medicean Villa at Careggi, the seat of the Platonic Academy, for the purpose of completing the fountain of which Vasari here gives an account. The porphyry work, both in design and execution, is worthy of the beautiful bronze that surmounts it. The basin rests on a well-turned dwarf pillar of porphyry and this on a square base of the same material. The surfaces are true and the arrises sharp, and the whole is carried out in a workmanlike manner, and by no means betrays a ‘prentice hand.’

[24]. See Vasari’s Life of Michelangelo, Opere, ed. Milanesi, VII, 260.

[25]. That is Cosimo ‘Pater Patriae,’ who died at Careggi in 1464. The portrait in question is shown on Plate III. For what is known about this and other works by Francesco del Tadda, see postea, p. 113 f.

[26]. See Note on ‘Porphyry and Porphyry Quarries,’ postea, p. 101.

[27]. This remark is evidently derived by Vasari from Leon Battista Alberti, who writes as follows in De Re Aedificatoria, Lib. II, ‘At nos de porphirite lapide compertum habemus non modo flammis non excoqui, verum et contigua quaeque circumhereant saxa intra fornacem reddere ut ignibus ne quidquam satis exquoquantur.’ The sense of ‘excoqui’ in this passage, and of Vasari’s ‘cuocer,’ is somewhat obscure, but can be interpreted by reference to old writings on stones, in which great importance is given to their comparative power of resistance to fire. See Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 22, etc., etc. Theophrastus, Περὶ Λίθων, § 4, has the following: ‘Stones have many special properties ... for some are consumed by fire and others resist it ... and in respect of the action of the fire and the burning they show many differences....’ The ‘excoqui’ of Alberti probably refers to the resistance of porphyry to the fire as compared with the submission to it of stones like limestone, which are ‘burnt out’ or calcined by the heat. Vasari’s ‘non si cuoce’ is not an adequate translation of Alberti’s word ‘excoqui.’ With a blast heat porphyry fuses to a sort of obsidian or slag, but a moderate heat only causes it to lose its fine purple hue and become grey. This is the ‘rawness’ implied in Vasari’s word ‘incrudelisce.’ To us rawness suggests raw meat which is redder in colour than cooked, but the Italians, who are not great meat eaters, would have in their minds the action of fire on cakes and similar comestibles that darken when baked, and an Italian artist would think too of the action of fire on clay, ‘che viene rossa quando ella è cotta’ as he says in chapter XXV of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting. See Frontispiece, where A1, compared with A, shows the effect of fire on the stone.

[28]. The two porphyry columns, that stand one on each side of Ghiberti’s Old Testament gates at the eastern door of the Baptistry of Florence, serve to point a moral about the untrustworthiness of popular sayings. When these apply to monuments it usually happens that the monument itself hopelessly discredits the saying. The porphyry columns in question are perfectly normal in colour and show no recognizable trace of the action of fire. Villani (Chronicle, bk. IV, ch. 31) says of these columns ‘The Pisani sent them to Florence covered with scarlet cloth, and some said that before they sent them they put them in the fire for envy.’ If we rationalize a little we can imagine that the scarlet cloth, the use of which by the Pisans in connection with porphyry shows a most lamentable absence of taste in colour, would at first sight seem to take the colour out of the porphyry and make it look grey through contrast. Hence may have arisen the impression which gave rise to the saying. Boccaccio, in his commentary on the passage in Dante (Inferno, XV, 67), in which the ‘blindness’ of the Florentines is referred to, notices this affair of the columns as one explanation of this accusation against his countrymen.

[29]. On the subject of serpentine some misapprehension exists. Mineralogists apply the term to a soft stone of a green hue with long curling markings through it, which in their form suggest lacertine creatures and account for the name of the stone. It derives its colour from the presence of a large percentage of manganese in union with silica, and contains twelve or so per cent. of water. A penknife scores it easily. The ‘Verde di Prato,’ a dark stone used in bands on Tuscan buildings, of which there is question in a subsequent section, postea, p. 43, is a species of true serpentine.

On the other hand the word ‘serpentine’ is in common use for a dark green stone of quite a different kind, that occurs very commonly in ancient Roman tesselated pavements, and it is this false serpentine that Vasari has in view. It is very hard indeed, and a penknife does not mark it. Professor Bonney describes it as ‘a somewhat altered porphyritic basalt,’ and it is full of scattered crystals of a paler green composed of plagioclasic felspar. These crystals average about the size of grains of maize and they sometimes cross each other, thus justifying Vasari’s description of them. A specimen is B, on the Frontispiece. This stone was found in Egypt, and it is probably the ‘Augustan’ and ‘Tiberian’ stone mentioned by Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 7. See Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1888, p. 9. The chief quarry of it however was in the Peloponnesus to the south of Sparta, and the produce of this is called by Pliny, loc. cit., ‘Lacedaemonium viride.’ It should be noted that ‘Verde Antico,’ a green marble of which the chief quarries are in Thessaly, is distinct from both the true and the false ‘serpentine.’

[30]. Cipollaccio. It is not clear what is the difference, if any exist, between the stone thus called and the ‘Cipollino’ which Vasari discusses in a later section, postea, p. 49. The latter is a name in universal employment, but the term ‘Cipollaccio’ is not known to Cavaliere Marchionni, the courteous Director of the Florentine State Manufactory of Mosaics, nor is it recognized at Carrara. On the other hand it is given as the name of a marble in Tomaseo’s Dizionario (though probably only on the strength of this mention in Vasari) and a stone worker at Settignano claimed to know and use the word. On the material see the Note on ‘Cipollino,’ postea, p. 49. The terminations ‘-accio’ and ‘-ino’ are dear to the Florentines—Masaccio and Masolino will occur to everyone.

[31]. This is the ‘Cortile di Belvedere’ where the Laocoon and Apollo Belvedere are located. See Note 30.

[32]. On Michelangelo’s niche and fountain see the Note on ‘The Cortile of the Belvedere in the Vatican in the sixteenth century,’ at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 115. The ‘river god’ is the ‘Tigris’ of the Vatican.

[33]. Vasari’s description of the variegated stones called breccias is clear and good. Corsi, Delle Pietre Antiche, Roma, 1845, p. 139, defines breccias as ‘marbles formed of numerous fragments of other marbles either of one colour or of different colours, embedded in a calcareous cement.’ The mineralogist distinguishes breccias from conglomerates by the fact that in the former the fragments embedded are angular, in the latter round like pebbles. The fragments need not be of marble. These breccias were greatly used at the Renaissance, as Vasari indicates, for the framing of doorways and for chimney pieces, but it may be questioned whether they are really suitable for such architectural use. For door jambs and similar constructive members a self-coloured stone, with its greater severity of effect, would be preferable. On the other hand, for panels and inlays and decorative uses generally, the variegated stones are quite in place. See C, D on the Frontispiece.

[34]. See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries’ postea, p. 119 f.

[35]. S. Giusto, commonly called S. Giusto a Monte Martiri, lies by Monte Rantoli, between the valleys of the Ema and Greve, to the south of Florence.

[36]. Breccia columns answering to this description are to be seen in the lower part of the Boboli Gardens to the west of the ‘island basin’ with John of Bologna’s ‘Oceanus.’

[37]. The Egyptian breccia is found at Hamamat to the east of Luxor. It consists, Mr Brindley writes, in rich-coloured silicious fragments cemented together, and is very difficult to work and to polish, ‘owing to the cementing matrix being frequently harder than the boulders.’ Its general colour is greenish and it is called sometimes ‘Breccia Verde.’ The most important known work executed in this breccia is the grand sarcophagus of Nectanebes I, about 378 B.C., now in the British Museum. It is on the left in the large Hall a little beyond the Rosetta stone. Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1888, p. 24 ff.

[38]. Signor Cornish, the courteous castellan of the Royal Palace, believes this to be the urn that now serves as the basin of the fountain surmounted with a figure of the Arno, near the Annalessa gate of the Boboli Gardens. It has two masks carved on the front, as is common in antique conche of the kind.

[39]. On entering the porch or narthex of St. Peter’s by the central archway, the visitor may note on each side of the external opening a column of breccia, or strictly speaking of ‘pavonazzetto brecciato,’ over twenty-five feet in height. They are worn, patched, and discoloured, and evidently come from some earlier building. It can be reasonably conjectured that these are the two columns to which Vasari refers, and that they were originally in the old basilica which was being replaced in Vasari’s time by the existing structure. Vasari would see them in their original position forming part of the colonnade between nave and aisles, for the entrance part of the old Constantinian basilica was still standing in the sixteenth century, and the columns were only removed to their present position when Paul V constructed the existing façade at the beginning of the century following.

[40]. The familiar red Verona marble is not a true breccia, but a fossil marble.

[41]. ‘Granite’ is from the Italian ‘granito,’ which means the ‘grained’ stone.

[42]. The ‘grandissimi vasi de’ bagni,’ to which Vasari here refers, are those vast granite bath-shaped urns, some twenty feet long, of which the best known is probably the specimen that stands by the obelisk in the centre of the amphitheatre of the Boboli Gardens at Florence. This, with a fellow urn, that stands not far off in the Piazzale della Meridiana, came from the Villa Medici at Rome, and they may have been seen in Rome by Vasari before they were placed in that collection. No such urns are now to be found in or about any of the three churches at Rome here mentioned by Vasari. Documents however, recently published in the first volume of Lanciani’s Storia degli Scavi, pp. 3–5, show that there stood formerly in the Piazza S. Salvatore in Lauro, north west from the Piazza Navona, a ‘conca maximae capacitatis,’ to which Vasari no doubt refers. Two other such conchae were found in the Thermae of Agrippa, and one was placed by Paul II, 1464–71, in the Piazza di S. Marco, which was then called ‘Piazza della Conca di S. Marco,’ while the other was located by Paul III (Farnese), 1534–49, in front of his palace. Cardinal Odoardo Farnese afterwards united the two and formed with them the two fountains now in the Piazza Farnese. Lanciani also mentions a ‘conca di bigio in S. Pietro in Vinculis.’ There is a fine specimen, which may be one of those Vasari has mentioned, in front of the little church of S. Stefano at the back of St. Peter’s. We wish cordially to thank Signor Cornish, of the Royal Palace, Florence, for information kindly given about the Boboli monuments.

[43]. The quarries opened by the Romans in Elba are now practically abandoned. The Catalogue to the Italian Section of the London International Exhibition of 1862 speaks of the granites of Elba as ‘but little used, although blocks and columns of almost any size may be had.’ In the late mediaeval and Renaissance period however, the quarries of Elba were worked, and the granite columns of the Baptistry of Pisa were cut there in the twelfth century, while Cosimo I extracted thence the granite block out of which he cut the tazza of the Boboli Gardens mentioned by Vasari a few sentences further on. Jervis, I Tesori Sotterranei dell’ Italia, Torino, 1889, p. 315, speaks of the remains of Roman quarrying works to be seen on the Island. He believes that the grey columns of the Pantheon (see Note infra) are Elban, and Cellini (Scultura, ch. vi) claims an Elban origin for the granite column of S. Trinità, Florence, which is certainly antique and of Roman provenance, see postea, p. 110 f.

[44]. The portico of the Pantheon is now supported by sixteen monoliths of granite nearly 40 ft. high. Seven of these in the foremost row are of grey granite, the eighth (that at the north-east angle) and all those behind are of red granite. The present portico is a reconstruction by Hadrian in octostyle form of the original decastyle portico built by Agrippa. Agrippa’s portico had columns of a grey granite called ‘granito del foro,’ because it is the same kind that is used for the columns of the Forum of Trajan (Basilica Ulpia). This according to Corsi, Delle Pietre Antiche, Roma, 1845, is Egyptian from Syene, the Lapis Psaronius of Pliny, and Professor Lanciani, who has kindly written in reply to our question on the subject, endorses this opinion, though Jervis, see above, thinks the grey Pantheon columns are Elban. When Hadrian reconstructed the portico, he added columns of red granite, which are admitted by all to be Egyptian. The two columns at the east of the present portico were brought in in the year 1666 to fill gaps caused by the fall of the two Hadrianic ones. They came from the Baths of Nero and were found near S. Luigi dei Francesi. See postea, p. 128 f.

[45]. See Note 4, ante, p. [26].

[46]. The form of the pick Vasari seems to have in his mind is given in the sketch, C, Fig. 2, postea, p. 48. Among other tools figured in the illustration, A and B are some that are employed at this day in Egypt for the working of hard stones.

[47]. This tazza is still in evidence and serves as the basin of the great fountain in the ‘island’ lake in the western part of the Boboli Gardens. It is said that Duke Cosimo extracted a second tazza larger than this one from the Elban quarry but it was unfortunately broken. Signor Cornish says the fragments are still to be seen. The sculptor Tribolo was sent to Elba to obtain the basins. Of the ‘tavola’ or table nothing is known.

[48]. In this apparently innocent section Vasari has mixed up notices of some half-dozen different kinds of stone, on most of which his ideas are somewhat vague. Hence a separate Note is required, and this will be found at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 117 (‘Paragon and other Stones associated with it by Vasari’). The letters (a), (b), etc., are referred to in the Note.

[49]. The ‘Apollo’ at Naples, in basalt, no. 6262. See Note, postea, p. 104.

[50]. The porphyry ‘Apollo’ at Naples, no. 6281. See Note, as above.

[51]. The five eastern window openings of S. Miniato are filled with slabs of antique pavonazzetto with red-purple markings, nearly two inches thick and measuring in surface about 9 ft. by 3 ft. The windows are square headed. The slabs transmit the light unequally according to the darker or lighter patches in their markings, but the effect is pleasing. Similar window fillings are to be seen at Orvieto. ‘Almost any marble,’ it has been said, ‘with crystalline statuary ground, an inch thick, placed on the sunny side of a church in Italy would admit sufficient light for worship, but it would not do in our variable climate.’ The so-called Onyx marbles of Algeria and Mexico, as well as Oriental alabasters, are specially suitable for the purpose here in view. The ‘white and yellowish’ eastern marbles that Vasari writes of were probably of this kind.

[52]. By ‘the same quarries’ Vasari means, no doubt, those of Egypt and Greece, of Carrara, of Prato, etc., mentioned in § 7 in connection with ‘paragon.’ On the subject see the Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ postea, p. 119f.

[53]. The reference is to the two so-called ‘Horse-Tamers’ opposite the Quirinal Palace at Rome, that probably once stood in front of the Thermae of Constantine, which occupied the slope of the Quirinal. The figures of the youths, perhaps representing the Dioscuri, are eighteen feet high, and the material was long ago pronounced Thasian marble (see Matz-Duhn, Antike Bildwerke in Rom, Leipzig, 1881, I, 268). The works are Roman copies of Greek originals. They have recently been overhauled, with very good result as regards their appearance. The sculptor, Professor Ettore Ferrari, who superintended this work, reports that the material is ‘marmo greco,’ which may be held to settle the question in favour of Greek as against Luna marble.

[54]. The ‘Nile’ is now in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, the fellow-statue, the ‘Tiber,’ see ante, p. [36], in the Louvre at Paris. They are said to have been discovered at Rome early in the sixteenth century, near S. Maria Sopra Minerva where was the Temple of Isis and Serapis, and Pope Leo X had them placed in the Cortile di Belvedere of the Vatican. They were removed to Paris in ‘the year X’ by Napoleon, and in 1815 the ‘Nile’ was sent back to Rome, the ‘Tiber’ remaining in the Louvre. The ‘Nile’ is much the better work of art and is a copy or a study from an Alexandrian original, perhaps the ‘Nilus’ in basalt, which, according to Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 7, Augustus dedicated in the Temple of Peace. Amelung, in his Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, only states that the ‘Nile’ is in ‘großkörnigem Marmor.’ The material of the statue certainly differs from that of the restored parts, and we should guess it as Pentelic marble repaired with Carrara. About the ‘Tiber,’ Froener, in the Louvre Catalogue, states that it is of Pentelic marble, and it is so labelled. Our measurements show that both statues required blocks of the dimensions 10 ft. by 5 ft. by 5 ft. in height. It may be noted that the finest statuary marble known, that of the island of Paros, is not to be obtained in very large blocks. That out of which the Hermes of Praxiteles has been carved must have measured about 8 ft. by 5 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in. and is considered an exceptionally fine block. Pentelic and Carrara marble can be obtained in much larger pieces. We saw not long ago in the modern quarries behind Mount Pentelicus a block nearly 20 ft. in cube. One seventeen feet long has recently been cut in the Monte Altissimo quarries in the Carrara mountains for a copy of the ‘David’ of Michelangelo. A piece of Monte Altissimo marble of the best quality is shown as J on the Frontispiece.

[55]. This remark shows a just observation on the part of Vasari. The Greek nose is markedly different from the Florentine. The latter, as may be seen in the ‘St. George’ of Donatello, or the ‘David’ of Michelangelo, has more shape than the classical nose. There is more difference marked between the nasal bone and the cartilaginous prolongation towards the tip, and there is more modelling about the nostril, which the Italian sculptors make thinner and more sensitive.

[56]. The Carfagnana, or more properly Garfagnana, is the name applied to the upper part of the valley of the Serchio, between the Apennines and the Apuan Alps, on the western slopes of which the marble quarries are situated. See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ postea, p. 119 f., for the different marbles and their provenance.

[57]. Benvenuto Cellini, Scultura, ch. iv, mentions this black marble from Carrara, which he says is very hard and brittle and difficult to work. Black marble is still quarried in the Carrara district, but only to a small extent.

[58]. The grey marble is that known now as ‘Bardiglio’; the grey-veined ‘Marmo-’ or ‘Bardiglio-’ ‘fiorito’; the red, ‘Breccia.’

[59]. For ‘Cipollino’ see footnote 70 on p. 49, postea.

[60]. The ‘Mischiati’ are the variegated stones we know as ‘Breccias,’ already noticed in § 5. Vasari explains the names ‘Saligni’ and ‘Campanini’ in § 10. The terms are not now in use.

[61]. The ‘David’ stood formerly on the left hand side as one entered the gateway of the Ducal Palace, or Palazzo Vecchio. It is 15 feet high. In 1873 it was removed, and is now in the Academy, but Bandinello’s group still holds its original position to the right of the entrance, on the side towards the Uffizi.

[62]. The existing figure of Neptune is the work of Ammanati, to whom Florence owes the stately Ponte S. Trinità. The subsidiary figures of sea-deities on the fountain are by other hands.

[63]. See Note, postea, p. 119 f.

[64]. On the subject of the Seravezza quarries and their exploitation by Michelangelo see Note, as above. With regard to the Façade of S. Lorenzo much might be said, as the project for its completion has now again come forward into prominence. See articles by Sig. B. Supino in L’Arte, Anno IV, fasc. 7, and M. Marcel Reymond in the Revue Archéologique for 1906. It is well known that Brunelleschi, who reconstructed the basilica in the fifteenth century, left the façade incomplete and with no indication of his design for it. As it was the church of the Medici, the popes of this family, Leo X and Clement VII, furthered by means of a competition a grand project for its completion; and in this work Michelangelo was for many years involved. Drawings of his for the proposed façade are to be seen in the Casa Buonarroti, and he prepared marbles, as noticed in the Note, postea, p. 119 f., but the preparations proved abortive.

What Vasari says about Michelangelo’s façade that it ‘è oggi abbozzata fuor della porta di detta chiesa,’ and that there is one column on the spot, is interesting but not very easy to understand. Milanesi, in a note on this passage in his edition of Vasari, I, 119, going one better than the Lemonnier editors, gives a circumstantial account to the effect that ‘The preliminary work (abbozzata) which was outside the church in the days of Vasari, was buried in the first years of the seventeenth century, along with other architectural fragments, in a trench excavated on the piazza along the left side of the church.’ Unfortunately among the authorities at S. Lorenzo this statement is smiled at as a mere popular legend, but it is hoped that in connection with the long-delayed completion, which is now again on the tapis, the truth on this matter will come to light.

[65]. Milanesi remarks, ad loc., that for ‘Pietrasanta’ Vasari should have written ‘Carrara,’ as the quarries at the latter place were actually exploited by the ancients, whereas the Pietrasanta workings were only opened up in the time of Michelangelo. See postea, p. 122. The Pietrasanta people however do claim that the Romans were at work among their hills.

[66]. There are abundant instances both from Greek and from Roman times of statues, heads, architectural members, columns, and the like, blocked out in the quarries, and still lying unfinished as they were left many hundreds of years ago.

[67]. Vasari gives a notice of Giovanni da Nola, whose surname was Merliano, in the Lives of Alfonso Lombardi and other sculptors. See Opere, ed. Milanesi, V, 94 f. He there describes the tomb mentioned above, which was to have been transported to Spain, but owing to the death of the viceroy, Don Pietro, Marquis of Villafranca, it has remained in S. Giacomo at Naples.

[68]. Some of the tools of sculptors and masons referred to by Vasari are shown in Fig. 2, E-J, above.

[69]. A worker in stones at Settignano knew of drills of the weight of about twelve pounds each, and thought twenty pounds conceivable, for very large work.

[70]. Vasari seems to refer to the common greyish marble popularly called ‘Sicilian.’ There are finer kinds of veined marble called ‘fioriti,’ ‘flowered,’ including ‘marmi fioriti’ and ‘bardigli fioriti,’ the last in two shades of grey.

[71]. i.e., the breccias noticed in § 5.

[72]. ‘Cipollino’ marble, a very familiar material, receives its name from ‘cipolla,’ an onion, but there is a curious divergence of opinion as to the reason of the appellation. (1) The onion colour the marble shows in many specimens; (2) the onion-like shape of the large bossy markings which occur in the marble; (3) the fact that it is disposed to scale away under the influence of the weather like the coats of an onion; and (4) the concentric curves in which the edges of these coats are seen to lie in a section across the grain, have all been adduced as explanatory of the name. Herrmann in his Steinbruchindustrie, Berlin, 1899, p. 68, pronounces for the third, and this is also the opinion of Corsi, who says, Pietre Antiche, p. 97, ‘gli scarpellini lo conoscono sotto il nome di cipollino, per la ragione che, trovandosi fra la sostanza calcare di tel marmo lunghi e spessi strati di mica, facilmente su tali strati si divide a somiglianza della cipolla.’ Zirkel however, in his Lehrbuch der Petrographie, Leipzig, 1894, III, 452, pronounces for the fourth, which seems on the whole the one to be preferred. There are two cipollino columns standing in the Roman Forum a little to the east of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, famous for its monoliths of this same marble, that in the concentric wavy lines marking the alternate layers in the stone remind us curiously of an onion cut in half. See for a specimen H on the Frontispiece.

[73]. Vasari explains the name ‘saligno’ as ‘salt-like.’ The term is not recognized at Carrara, nor in the Florentine manufactory of Mosaics.

[74]. The term ‘campanino’ for a kind of marble is not known now in the Carrara district.

[75]. About 10 miles south east of Carrara.

[76]. Near Pietrasanta in the Apuan Alps.

[77]. On the promontory of Piombino, opposite Elba.

[78]. In the so-called Pisan Mountains between Pisa and Lucca. For these places and their quarries see Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ postea, p. 119 f.

[79]. See Note, as above, especially p. 126.

[80]. There are great quarries of this stone below Tivoli near the course of the ancient Anio, now Teverone. The station Bagni on the Roma-Tivoli railway is close to them. Those near the place called Barco were exploited by the ancient Romans, while Bernini derived the stone for the colonnades in front of St. Peter’s from the quarries called ‘Le Fosse,’ a little to the north of the former. Vitruvius, De Arch., II, vii, 2, writes of the ‘Tiburtina saxa’ as resisting all destructive agencies save that of fire, and the remark is repeated by Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 22. Vasari’s account of its origin is correct. It is a deposit of lime in water, and the cavities in it are partly caused by plants, moss, etc., round which the deposit has formed itself and which of course have long ago decayed away. See O on the Frontispiece. The stone did not come into use at Rome until about the last century of the Republic, and it was not, like peperino, one of the old traditional building materials.

[81]. Vasari evidently refers to the remains of the Templum Sacrae Urbis behind the present church of Ss. Cosma e Damiano, to which was affixed the ancient ‘Capitoline’ plan of Rome.

[82]. See the remarks on Rusticated masonry in § 20, and Notes, postea, pp. 65 and 132.

[83]. On the ‘round temple,’ and its designer, ‘Maestro Gian,’ see Note on the subject, postea, p. 128 f.

[84]. S. Luigi dei Francesi is the national church of the French, and is situated close to the Palazzo Madama, the meeting place of the Italian Senate, near the Piazza Navona. The present edifice was built by Giacomo della Porta and consecrated in 1589. See Note, postea, p. 128 f.

[85]. For which it offers in the cavities above spoken of an excellent key.

[86]. Traces of these stucco decorations are still to be seen in the public entrance to the Colosseum next the Esquiline. They are said to have been taken as models by some of the plaster-workers of the Renaissance. See Vasari’s Life of Giovanni da Udine, Opere, VI, 553.

[87]. This is the so-called ‘Sala Regia’ which serves as a vestibule to the Sistine Chapel. Sixtus IV planned it and San Gallo enlarged it and began the adornment of the vault with plaster work, which was carried on afterwards by Perino del Vaga and Daniele da Volterra (Pistolesi, Il Vaticano Descritto, VIII, 89). It is the most richly decorated of all the Vatican apartments, but is florid and overladen. The stucco enrichment of the roof is heavy, and the figures in the same material by Daniele da Volterra that are sprawling on the tops of the doorways and on the cornices are of the extravagant later Renaissance type. The contrast between this showy hall and the exquisitely treated Appartamento Borgia of earlier date is very marked.

[88]. The Farnese Palace is in the main the work of Antonio da San Gallo, the younger, who at his death in 1546 had carried up the façade nearly to the cornice and completed the ground story and half the second story of the cortile. Michelangelo finished the second or middle story of the cortile, as far as the architecture went, according to San Gallo’s design, and added the third story from his own. His are also the enrichments of the frieze of the second order in the cortile, and he has the chief credit for the noble external cornice, of which Vasari writes in this section. It is now rather the fashion to criticize severely Michelangelo’s architectural forms, and G. Clausse, Les San Gallo, Paris, 1901, condemns his third story of the cortile and says of his frieze (p. 85), ‘Michelange fit ajouter dans la frise ces guirlandes et ces mascarons en stuc qui enlèvent à ce beau portique le caractère de grandeur simple et d’harmonieuse majesté dû à ses proportions mêmes.’ It will not escape notice that Vasari regards these ornaments as not in stucco but in the travertine itself. On the question thus raised Monseigneur Duchesne, the distinguished Director of the French School at Rome which is housed in the Farnese, has had the kindness in reply to our inquiry to say that so far as can be ascertained without the use of scaffolding the ornaments of the frieze are in stucco, with the exception of the Fleur-de-lys which occur in the position of key-stones above the centre of each window arch. These are in travertine, as are the ornaments (trophies of arms etc.) carved on the metopes of the frieze of the order of the ground story in the cortile. The point has some interest in connection with the travertine carvings by the French artist at S. Luigi dei Francesi (see postea, p. 131), and the suggestion of M. Marcel Reymond (loc. cit.) that the Italians of the first half of the fifteenth century were not accustomed, as the French were, to execute decorative carvings in soft stone.

[89]. The exterior of St. Peter’s is built of travertine, and a walk round it gives an opportunity for a study of the fine effect of the stone when used on a vast scale. The details of construction in the interior, which are lauded by Vasari, are now concealed under the decoration that covers all the interior surfaces.

[90]. Lavagna is on the coast about half way between Genoa and Spezzia. The slate of the district is pronounced by Mr Brindley to be of poor quality and liable to bleach to a dirty ochre colour like that of brown paper. In the Official Catalogue of the Italian section of the International Exhibition of 1862 it is stated that in modern times also ‘large jars or reservoirs for containing oil, made of this slate, are employed in Liguria, as well as in the principal maritime dépôts of the oil trade.’

[91]. Peperino is a volcanic product in origin quite distinct from travertine. It consists of ashes and fragments of different materials compacted together and is called ‘pepper stone’ from the black grains that occur in it. It was one of the two old traditional building stones at Rome before the introduction of travertine from the quarries by Tibur, the other being the coarser and commoner tufa of which the wall of Servius Tullius was built. The most interesting monument in the material is the sarcophagus of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus in the Vatican, dating from the third century B.C. A characteristic piece, with the black ‘pepper’ marks, is shown as Q on the Frontispiece.

[92]. Istrian stone is a fine-grained limestone of a warm yellowish grey tint; it is capable of taking a polish, and is obtainable in large pieces. It is broken at various points of the coast from Merlera near Pola to the island of Lesina off the coast by Spalato, and was largely used in the buildings of Venice, and generally in north-eastern Italy. A considerable amount has been recently employed in the monumental buildings of the Ring at Vienna. See L on the Frontispiece.

[93]. ‘The Doric edifice of the Panattiera’ sounds a very curious description of Sansovino’s famous and magnificent Library of S. Marco, the finest late Renaissance building in Italy, but this seems to be what Vasari had in his mind. Dr Robertson of Venice has been kind enough to explain in a letter the history of the site which he has ascertained from the archives. The ground where the Library now stands was occupied up to 1537 by a government grain and bread store, the ‘Panattiera’ (or more properly ‘Panatteria’). The shops for the sale of bread were then removed and grouped round the base of the Campanile, where they were replaced a little later by Sansovino’s Loggetta. Vasari visited Venice in 1542, and at that time if the shops and store had themselves been removed their name would still cling to the place and explain his words. We should hardly call the Library a ‘Doric edifice,’ as only the lower Order is ‘Doric,’ but we must remember that it was only this lower Order that would be completed at the date of Vasari’s visit.

[94]. The Tuscan Zecca. The original Zecca or mint was at the Rialto, and it was afterwards transferred to the Piazzetta, where Sansovino in 1535 erected for it the present edifice, in the rusticated or Tuscan style. The situation of it is between the Library and the quay. The façade shows an arcaded lowest story in rusticated masonry, with two stories above, one in the Doric the other in the Ionic Order, and the columns in both cases are themselves rusticated; that is to say they have projecting horizontal courses of stone that appear to mark them with a series of bands or bars.

[95]. ‘Macigno’ is a green grey sandstone of the lower tertiary formation in Italy.

[96]. Pietra Serena is a very fine sedimentary sandstone, and Vasari does not say too much in its praise. Baldinucci in his Vocabolario repeats much of what Vasari has said, but mentions also a ‘pietra bigia’ or grey stone, which lies outside the ‘serena,’ and is inferior to it.

The quarries of pietra serena are abundant along the southern slopes of Monte Ceceri, to the south east of Fiesole, overhanging Majano. The blue colour Vasari ascribes to it is the cause of its name, the epithet ‘sereno’ being specially applicable to the clear blue sky. See G on the Frontispiece. Vasari’s account of the stones dealt with in §§ 16, 17, is not very clear, as he returns to the epithet ‘serena’ at the close of § 16 for a stone that he makes to differ essentially from the ‘serena’ of the beginning of the section in that it is weather-resisting. Cellini in his second Treatise, Della Scultura, ed. Milanesi, 1893, p. 201, is clearer. He distinguishes three kinds, (1) ‘pietra serena,’ azure in hue and only good for work in interiors; (2) a stone of a brownish hue (tanè) that he calls ‘pietra morta.’ The lexicographers fight shy of this term, but it seems to mean a stone without any lime in it and therefore unchangeable by the action of fire, while a limestone would be ‘pietra viva.’ See Cellini, loc. cit., p. 187. This is suitable for figure carving, and it resists ‘wind and rain and all violence of the weather.’ It is evidently the stone Vasari writes of as the material of Donatello’s ‘Dovizia.’ (3) The third kind is the pietra forte, also brownish in hue, and useful for decorative carvings on exteriors. Cellini notes as Vasari does that it is only found in small pieces.

[97]. Pietra del fossato. Signor Cellerini, of the Opera del Duomo, Florence, says that the name ‘pietra del fossataccio’ is still used among practical stone workers. It is stone gained by excavation.

[98]. The colour of the stone in the Library and New Sacristy of S. Lorenzo is a brownish grey rather than ‘bluish.’ It tells as warm in hue against the white walls, which are of marble in the Sacristy and in the Library of plaster.

[99]. Dr A. Gherardi, Director of the State Archives at Florence, has been so kind as to make researches in the documents under his charge for the purpose of discovering Vasari’s authority for this statement. These investigations have so far however proved without result. Among the ‘Leggi e Bandi’ of the sixteenth century in Tuscany collected by Cantini in the first volume of his Legislazione Toscana there are various regulations about trades, prohibitions against cutting timber on the hills, measures facilitating the import of building materials into certain localities, and the like, which show that an edict such as Vasari refers to was quite possible in the early days of the Grand Ducal régime. The nearest approach to it that we have been able to discover are certain edicts of the end of the sixteenth century, published by Mariotti, La Legislazione delle Belle Arti, Roma, 1892, p. 246 f., that prohibit the exportation from the state of ‘pietre mischie dure’ (agates, jaspers, and the like) of which the Grand Duke had need for a certain chapel he was building, evidently the ‘Cappella dei Principi’ at S. Lorenzo.

[100]. This is of course the well known ‘Uffizi,’ erected by Vasari between 1560 and 1574 for the accommodation of various state departments. The expression ‘strada’ or ‘street’ has reference to the scheme of the building, which is erected along the two sides and one end of a very elongated, and indeed street-like, court, from which the various entrances into the building open. In documents relating to its construction it is sometimes referred to as ‘Via dei Magistrati.’ A little later Vasari gives an interesting note on the scheme of construction he employed in the lower order of the edifice. See postea, p. 72 f.

[101]. The Mercato Vecchio at Florence was an open square that occupied the northern portion of the site now covered by the new Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. On the side next the Via Calimara a granite column was erected in 1431, and on this column was set up the statue by Donatello representing ‘Abundance’ (‘Dovizia’). This stood till October 20, 1721, when in consequence of damage due to time and exposure it fell to the ground and was dashed into pieces. In the following year, 1722, Giov. Batt. Foggini carved another figure representing the same allegorical personage, and this remained till our own time; and may be seen in situ in one of Alinari’s photographs. It is now in the museum of S. Marco with other fragments from the demolitions in the ‘Centro.’ See Guido Carocci, Il Mercato Vecchio di Firenze, Firenze, 1884.

[102]. On ‘Pietra Forte,’ the Official Catalogue of the Italian Section of the International Exhibition of 1862 reports, p. 62, as follows. ‘The rock called Pietraforte ... is very largely used in Florence; it is very durable, as may be seen in the older palaces of the city. In composition it is an arenaceous limestone, which is very hard and unalterable, as its name implies.’ It has been extensively quarried by Fiesole and to the north of Majano, and Monte Ripaldi, above the valley of the Ema to the south of Florence, furnishes large supplies of it. See M, N, on the Frontispiece.

[103]. The blocks used for the façade of the Pitti have been remarked on for their great size, one of them, an exceptional one it is true, measures 28 ft. in length.

[104]. On this use of the word ‘Goth’ or ‘Gothic’ in the sense of ‘mediaeval,’ see Note on ‘Vasari’s Opinion on Mediaeval Architecture,’ postea, p. 133 f.

[105]. Or San Michele, as every visitor to Florence knows, is the church occupying the lower story of a lofty building in the Via Calzaiuoli. Constructively speaking the upper part is supported on the ground story by piers between which are round headed arches, three on the north and south sides and two on the east and west. The heads of these are in every case filled with florid late Gothic tracery with intersecting arches and rich cusping, and on all sides but the west the openings below the heads are walled in. On the west the arches contain the doorways of entrance, and the tracery above the doors, about which Vasari is writing, is richer than on the other sides of the building. It is curious to find Vasari calling this work ‘truly admirable,’ whereas a page or two later we shall find him inveighing against the ‘Goths’ (the mediaeval builders) and all their works and ways.

[106]. Coats of arms. These ‘stemmi,’ as they are often called, are very familiar objects on the exterior of Tuscan palaces, and the arms of the Medici, six round balls or pellets, are constantly in evidence. In the view of the Fortress in Fig. 3 a ‘stemma’ of the Medici is to be seen displayed on the face of the wall. It is referred to by Vasari, Opere, ed. Milanesi, IV, 544. Mariotti, La Legislazione delle Belle Arti, Roma, 1892, p. 245, has printed an interesting edict of the year 1571, in Tuscany, designed to protect these memorials of the ancient Florentine families. The memory of those who built the houses, it says, ‘is preserved and perpetuated by their Arms, Insignia, Titles, Inscriptions, which are affixed or painted or carved or suspended over the doors, arches, windows, projecting angles or other places where they are conspicuously to be seen,’ and the edict, re-enacting older regulations, reminds the citizens that no one who purchases or becomes possessed of an old house on which there are insignia of the kind is allowed to remove or in any way deface them. No new owner is to presume to add his own arms or other memorial by the side of the old ones of the founder and constructor of the house. Only in cases where these are absent may the new owner put up his own insignia. This regulation shows a historical sense and a care for the tangible memorials of a city’s past which have been too often lacking in more modern times. No doubt it is due to its enforcement that so many of these ‘stemmi’ are left to add interest to the somewhat modernized streets of the Florence of to-day.

[107]. ‘In the times of the Goths;’ ‘German work.’ See Note on ‘Vasari’s Opinion on Mediaeval Architecture,’ postea, p. 133 f.

[108]. It will be seen that in this section Vasari combines two quite distinct things, the so-called ‘Tuscan,’ or as he calls it, the ‘Rustic’ Order, and rusticated masonry, which has nothing to do with the Orders of Architecture, but is a method of treating wall-surfaces. On this see the Note on ‘Rusticated Masonry,’ postea, p. 132. The reason why the ‘Tuscan’ is called the ‘Rustic’ Order, is that, being the simplest and, so to say, rudest of the Orders, it is most suitably employed in connection with walling of a rough and bossy appearance. The shafts of columns are sometimes rusticated to correspond with the walling, as at the Venetian ‘Zecca,’ mentioned ante, p. [56], but the expedient is of doubtful advantage, as the clear upright appearance of the column is thereby sacrificed.

[109]. Vasari says here that the ‘Rustic’ or Tuscan column is six ‘heads’ high. What does he mean by this? There is evidently in his mind the familiar comparison of different columns to human figures of different proportions, a conceit found in Vitruvius (IV, i, 6 f.) and in writers of the Renaissance (see Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria, Lib. IX, c. 7), and so he measures by ‘heads,’ which would apply to a figure but not to a column. ‘Testa,’ ‘head,’ cannot, as the context shows, mean the height of the capital of the column. It really means here the lower diameter of the column. It is this lower diameter (or sometimes half the lower diameter) that is the normal unit of measurement for the proportions of a column. Thus the height of the Tuscan column is given by Vitruvius and by Palladio and other moderns as six times the lower diameter. Though ‘head’ may seem a very curious word with which to describe this, there is no doubt that such is the meaning of it. Alberti, in his tract on the Orders and their proportions, uses the lower diameter as his measure but applies to it this very term ‘testa.’ There is a certain letter from Vasari to Duke Cosimo that deals with the measurements of a column of granite presented to him by the Pope and afterwards conveyed from Rome and set up in the Piazza di S. Trinità, where it carries the porphyry statue by Francesco del Tadda (postea, p. 111). Vasari gives the diameter of the ‘head’ of this column, but notes afterwards that the shaft diminishes from the ‘head’ upwards towards the necking (collarino). Hence there is no doubt about the interpretation of the word in question. See the letter in Opere, ed. Milanesi, VIII, 352.

[110]. The Citadel of Florence. This is not the ‘Belvedere’ fortress on the hill behind the Palazzo Pitti, but the so-called ‘Fortezza da Basso’ to the north of the town, now used as barracks, which the railway skirts just before entering the station near S. Maria Novella. It dates from 1534, and was built by Alessandro dei Medici with the intention of overawing the citizens. It occupied the site of the Faenza gate, and was partly within and partly outside the enceinte of the city. The ‘principal façade’ of which Vasari writes, is still well preserved in the middle of the southern face, opposite the town, and a sketch of it is shown in Fig. 3, but nothing else of interest is said to remain from the Renaissance period.

The masonry of the façade is an excellent example of elaborate rustication, and is very carefully executed in pietra forte. The illustration, Fig. 4, bears out Vasari’s description, and exhibits in alternation round bosses 18 in. in diameter and 4 in. in salience, and oblong diamonds about 3 ft. by 1 ft. 6 in. There are worked borders about 1 in. in width round all the lines of juncture, and the scheme is worth noticing.

[111]. Vitruvius in his first book (I, ii, 5) gives directions as to the Orders suitable for temples to different deities. Thus Minerva, Mars, and Hercules are to have temples in the Doric style, etc.; while in the eighteenth century Sir William Chambers, transferring the same idea to modern times, says that Doric ‘may be employed in the houses of generals, or other martial men, in mausoleums erected to their memory, or in triumphal bridges and arches built to celebrate their victories.’ The modern architect is disposed to smile at these restrictions, but there underlies them a sound appreciation of the aesthetic significance of architectural forms.

[112]. The building referred to is the well-known Uffizi palace at Florence. See ante, p. [59].

[113]. The construction described by Vasari is evidently of the kind indicated in the accompanying drawing, Fig. 5. The pieces of the frieze are joggled one into the other so as to form a flat arch, but the construction is kept to the inner part and the face shows vertical joints between the pieces. As this passage in Vasari seems to have escaped the notice of those interested in Renaissance construction, the existence of the device he describes has remained unsuspected and nothing is known about it at the Uffizi itself. The fact is that Vasari’s system has succeeded in one way too perfectly for his purpose. Everything has remained ‘safe and sound,’ and no one of the architrave beams shows signs of failure, so that no technical examination of the fabric has been called for. On the other hand, neither the artificers nor the world at large seem to have benefitted by Vasari’s kindness, for the books do not notice his device. There is no mention of it even in the huge work on Tuscan Renaissance architecture now just completed under the editorship of Baron Henri de Geymüller, nor in Raschdorff’s Palast-Architectur, nor Durm’s Baukunst der Renaissance, though references to it may possibly occur in older books that have escaped our notice. Joggled lintels forming flat arches are of course common enough. The new Parliament Building at Stockholm shows them conspicuously with the actual joints appearing on the face of the building. Mediaeval and Renaissance fireplaces often have lintels of the kind, as in Coningsburgh Castle, Yorks, and Linlithgow Palace.

[114]. i.e. width on the soffit, or, as it might be expressed, in depth from the outer face inwards.

[115]. ‘Sopra la colonna.’ This does not mean strictly the piece vertically above the column, which is the die (dado quadro) already mentioned. It is equivalent to the expression just below ‘sopra le colonne,’ and means simply ‘in the upper part.’ The piece referred to is A, A, in Fig. 5, the ‘pezzo del mezzo’ of the text as quoted below.

[116]. ‘Cosi si faccia sopra la colonna, che il pezzo del mezzo di detto fregio stringa di dentro, e sia intaccato a quartabuono infino a mezzo; l’altra mezza sia squadrata e diritta e messa a cassetta, perchè stringa a uso d’arco mostrando di fuori essere murata diritta.’ The sense of this sentence seems to be indicated by the drawing Fig. 5. The centre pieces A, A, will slip down into their places and in a fashion key the flat arch. There is the same construction in the cornice, see below.

[117]. The dimension here implied is not the width on the face from right to left, but the soffit-width, or depth from the outer face inwards. The dies and the cornice-pieces are of the same soffit-width as the architrave, but the frieze pieces are so much narrower as to allow space behind them for a flat arch of brick abutting at each end on that part of the die that exceeds in soffit-width the frieze. See plan, Fig. 5 (4), and section, Fig. 5 (5). The plan is at the level x, y.

[118]. ‘Sopra il dado del fregio’ see note on ‘Sopra la colonna.’ The middle piece which goes ‘a cassetta,’ i.e. spanning a void, is at the centre of the intercolumniation, not vertically over the die above the column.

[119]. Fig. 5 (4) and (5) show the nature of the construction across from the façade inwards. The corridor is spanned with a barrel vault that conceals the back of the entablature. It starts from the top of the architrave.

[120]. For this use of iron ties, which Vasari regards here as normal, see the illustration on p. 25 of Professor Durm’s Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien, in the Handbuch der Architectur, Stuttgart, 1903.

[121]. 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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[127]. ‘Largo’ is the word in the text, but it must be merely a clerical error for ‘alto.’

[128]. See Note 14, ante, p. [75].

[129]. See Note 86, ante, p. [53].

[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.

[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.’

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.’

[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.

[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.’

[138]. A few miles to the north west of Florence.

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

[140]. The well-known ‘Villa Madama.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[150]. That is, about 4½ inches.

[151]. About 15½ inches.

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

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

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

[155]. For Vasari, a practical artist, to commit himself to the statement that figures are made nine heads high, is somewhat extraordinary, for eight heads, the proportion given by Vitruvius (III, 1) is the extreme limit for a normal adult, and very few Greek statues, let alone living persons, have heads so small. The recently discovered ‘Agias’ by Lysippus, at Delphi, is very nearly eight heads high. The ‘Doryphorus’ at Naples not much more than seven. The ‘Choisseul Gouffier Apollo’ about seven and a half, etc. Vasari seems to have derived his curious mode of reckoning from Filarete, who in Book 1 of his Treatise on Architecture measures a man as follows: Head = 1 head, neck = ½, breast = 1, body = 2, thighs = 2, legs = 2, foot = ½, total nine heads. Alberti, Leonardo, Albrecht Dürer, and indeed almost all the older writers on art, discourse on the proportions of the human figure.

[156]. See Note on ‘Waxen Effigies and Medallions,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 188.

[157]. One objection to an armature of wood is that the material may swell with the damp of the clay and cause fissures. Iron is objectionable because the rust discolours the clay. Modern sculptors often use gas-piping in the skeletons of their models, as this is flexible and will neither rust nor swell.

[158]. Baked flour used to be employed by plasterers to keep the plaster they were modelling from setting too rapidly. See the Introduction by G. F. Robinson to Millar’s Plastering Plain and Decorative, London, 1897. The former used rye dough with good effect for the above purpose.

[159]. The tow or hay tied round the wood affords a good hold for the clay, which is apt to slip on anything smooth.

[160]. This method of producing drapery is not very artistic.

[161]. See Note on ‘Proportionate Enlargement’ at close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 190.

[162]. See Note on ‘The Use of Full-sized Models’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 192.

[163]. The carvers’ tools described by Vasari are the same that appear to have been in use in ancient Greece (see the article by Professor E. Gardner already referred to), that are figured in the Encyclopédie of the eighteenth century, and are now in use. Fig. 2, E to J, ante, p. [48], shows a set of them actually employed in a stone carver’s workshop at Settignano near Florence.

[164]. Actual polish of the surface of a marble figure is to be avoided, as the reflections from it where it catches the light destroy the delicacy of the effect of light and shade. Greek marbles were not polished, save in some cases where the aim seems to have been to imitate the appearance of shining bronze, but the Greeks finished their marbles more smoothly than the sculptors of to-day, most of whom prefer a ‘sensitive’ surface on which the marks of the last delicate chiselling can be discerned. Michelangelo’s Dead Christ in the ‘Pietà’ of St. Peter’s, his most finished piece of marble work, may almost be said to show polish, and Renaissance marbles generally are quite as smoothly finished as antiques. In the case of coloured marbles, used for surface decoration in plain panels, polish is of course necessary in order that the colour and veining may appear, but it does not follow from this that a self-coloured marble, carved into the similitude of a face or figure, should be polished.

[165]. English terminology for the different kinds of reliefs, and for sculpture generally, is very deficient, and many Italian terms are employed. It may be noted that Vasari’s ‘half relief’ (mezzo rilievo) is the highest kind he mentions, and would correspond to what is called in English ‘high relief.’

[166]. See Note on ‘Italian and Greek Reliefs,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 196.

[167]. Donatello’s flat, or ‘stiacciati’ reliefs are deservedly famous. The difficulty here is to convey the impression of solid form of three dimensions with the slightest possible actual salience. The treatment of the torso of the Christ in the marble ‘Pietà’ of the Victoria and Albert Museum is a good example.

[168]. The antique vessels of so-called ‘Arezzo’ ware are called Aretine vases. Messer Giorgio was in duty bound to take some note of the ancient pottery of his native city for it was from this that the Vasari derived their family name. According to the family tree given in a note to the Life of an ancestor of the historian (Opere, ed. Milanesi, II, 561), the family came from Cortona, and the first who settled in Arezzo was the historian’s great-grandfather, one Lazzaro, an artist in ornamental saddlery. He had a son, Giorgio, who practised the craft of the potter, and was especially concerned with the old Roman Aretine vases the technique of which he tried to reproduce. Hence he was called ‘Vasajo,’ ‘the vase maker,’ from which came the family appellation Vasari.

This ancient Aretine ware ‘must be regarded as the Roman pottery par excellence’ (Waters, History of Ancient Pottery, Lond., 1905, II, 480). It is practically the same ware that is known by the popular but unscientific term ‘Samian,’ and consists in cups and bowls and dishes usually of a small size of a fine red clay, ornamented with designs in low relief, produced by the aid of stamps or moulds. It is these relief ornaments that Vasari had in his mind when he wrote the words in the text. Arezzo is noticed by Pliny and other ancient writers as a great centre for the fabrication of this sort of ware, and Vasari tells us how his grandfather, Giorgio the ‘vasajo,’ discovered near the city some kilns of the ancient potters and specimens of their work. Very good specimens of Aretine ware are to be seen in the Museum at Arezzo, and the fabrique is represented in all important collections of ancient pottery.

[169]. See Note on ‘The Processes of the Bronze Founder’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 199, which the reader who is unacquainted with the subject, will find it useful to read forthwith. The best commentary on Vasari’s and Cellini’s account of bronze casting is to be found in the French Encyclopédie, where there is a description, with numerous illustrations, of the casting in 1699 of Girardon’s great equestrian statue of Louis XIV, destined for the Place Vendôme. It was claimed at the time to be the largest known single casting in the world, and represents in their utmost elaboration the various processes described by Vasari. Some of the illustrations are here reproduced, and will help to render clearer the descriptions in the text.

[170]. Plate VII shows a section or two of a piece-mould round a portion of a figure. It will be noticed that the pieces are so planned that they will all come away easily from the model and not be held by any undercut projections. The small pieces are then all enclosed in an outer shell divided into two halves, and called in French ‘chape’ answering to the ‘cappa’ of Vasari’s text. Plate VIII, A, shows the model of the Louis XIV statue as piece-moulded.

[171]. In the case of a heavy casting such an armature is necessary, and must be carefully constructed to give support at all points. The armature within the core of the horse of Louis XIV is shown in Plate VIII, D.

[172]. Vasari here describes a method of constructing the indispensable shell of wax which is to be replaced by the bronze. The hollow piece-mould is lined section by section with wax and a core is then formed to fill the rest of the interior and touch the inner surface of the wax at every point. The plaster mould is then removed and the wax linings of each of its sections are applied, each in its proper place, to the core, and fixed thereon by skewers. There is then a complete figure in wax, but, as this is made up of very many pieces, it has to be gone over carefully to smooth over the joins and secure unity of surface. Cellini’s plan seems a better one. He lines his hollow mould with a sort of paste or dough, and then fills up with the core. The dough is then removed and wax is poured in in its place, thus forming a continuous skin and securing a more perfect unity in the waxen shell.

[173]. On Plate VIII at B we see the core covered with the skin of wax and carefully gone over and finished in every part. The system of pipes with which it is covered are the ‘vents’ that Vasari notices in § 62, and also the channels through which the melted wax is to escape and the molten bronze to enter, as noticed in §§ 63, 64.

[174]. Vasari actually says that it must be put ‘al fuoco’ ‘to the fire,’ but it is clear that he does not mean that heat is at once to be applied to it. If this were done the wax would all be melted off the core too soon, before it was covered by the outer skin. It is only when the wax has been securely enclosed between the core and the outer skin that heat is needed to melt it away and leave its place free for the molten metal.

[175]. Plate VIII, C, shows this outer armature, with the ends of the transverse rods holding core and envelope together.

[176]. ‘Give passage to the metal.’ Their essential purpose is to allow for the escape of air which would be dangerous if driven by the metal into a confined space.

[177]. It should be understood that, in the process Vasari has in mind, the melted metal is introduced at the bottom of the mould so as to rise in it and expel before it the air. It is not poured in at the top. Hence the metal enters at the same orifice at which the wax flows out.

[178]. Plate VIII, D, gives a section through the model in the casting-pit, when all is ready for the actual operation of introducing the molten metal. The wax has all been run out, and the outline of the figure and of the horse is marked by a double line with a narrow space between. It is this space that will be filled by the bronze which will be introduced through numerous channels so that it may be distributed rapidly and evenly over the whole surface it is to cover. When in the pit the mould is packed all round with broken bricks or similar material, so that ‘the bronze may not strain it,’ nor cause it to shift.

[179]. The wax has already been carefully weighed, and in order to estimate how much bronze will be required for the cast a rough calculation is made based on the amount of wax.

[180]. The subject of the composition of bronze and of other alloys of copper is a complicated one, for the mixtures specified or established by analysis are very varied. Normally speaking, bronze is a mixture of copper with about ten per cent. of tin, brass of copper with twenty to forty per cent. of zinc. Vasari’s proportions for bells and for cannon are pretty much what are given now. In the Manuel de Fondeur (Manuels Roret) Paris, 1879, II, p. 94, eight to fifteen per cent. of tin are prescribed for cannon, fifteen to thirty per cent. for bell metal, the greater percentage of tin with the copper resulting in a less tough but harder and so sharper sounding metal. It will be noted however that for statuary metal Vasari specifies a mixture not of copper and tin but of copper and brass, that is, copper and zinc. Brass is composed of, say, twenty-five per cent. of zinc and seventy-five per cent. of copper, so that a mixture of two thirds, or sixty-six per cent., of copper with one third, or thirty-three per cent., of brass would work out to about ten parts of zinc to ninety of copper, and this agrees with classical proportions. The Greeks used tin for their bronzes, but various mysterious ingredients were supposed to be mingled in to produce special alloys. The Romans used zinc, or rather zinciferous ores such as calamine, with or in place of tin, and this is the tradition that Vasari follows.

A recent analysis of the composition of the bronze doors at Hildesheim, dating from 1015 A.D., gives about seventy-six parts copper, ten lead, eight tin, four zinc; and of the ‘Bernward’ pillar ascribed to about the same date, seventy copper, twenty-three tin, and five lead. These differences may surprise us, but metal casting in those days was a matter of rule of thumb, and we may recall Cellini’s account of his cramming all his household vessels of pewter into the melting pot to make the metal flow for casting his ‘Perseus.’

[181]. Vasari’s account of the making of dies for medals and of the process of striking these is clear, and agrees with the more elaborate directions contained in the seventh and following chapters of Cellini’s Trattato dell’ Oreficeria. Cellini however, unlike Vasari, was a practical medallist, and he goes more into detail. The process employed was not the direct cutting of the matrices or dies with chisels, nor, as gems are engraved, by the use of the wheel and emery (or diamond) powder, but the stamping into them of the design required by main force, by means of specially shaped hard steel punches on which different parts of the design had been worked in relief. The steel of the matrix or die had of course to be previously softened in the fire, or these punches would have made no impression on it. When finished it was again hardened by tempering. It may be noticed that the dies from which Greek coins were struck were to all appearance engraved as gems were engraved by the direct use of cutting tools or tools that, like the wheel, wore away the material with the aid of sand or emery.

The two matrices, or dies, for the obverse and reverse of the medal, being now prepared, the medal is not immediately struck. In the case of the Greek coin a bean-shaped piece, or a disk, of plain metal, usually of silver, called a ‘blank’ or ‘flan,’ was placed between the two dies and pressed into their hollows by a blow or blows of the hammer, so that all that was engraved on them in intaglio came out on the silver in relief. Vasari’s process is more elaborate. A sort of trial medal is first struck from the matrices in a soft material such as lead or wax, and this trial medal is reproduced by the ordinary process of casting in the gold or silver or bronze which is to be the material of the final medal. This cast medal has of course the general form required, but it is not sharp nor has it a fine surface. It is therefore placed between the matrices and forcibly compressed so as to acquire all the finish of detail and texture desired.

[182]. Plaster, or stucco, is sometimes regarded as an inferior material only to be used when nothing better can be obtained. It should not however be judged from the achievements of the domestic plasterer of to-day, who has to trust sometimes to the wall-paper to keep his stuff from crumbling away. Plaster as used by the ancients, and through a good part of the mediaeval and Renaissance periods up to the eighteenth century, is a fine material, susceptible of very varied and effective artistic treatment. It was made by the Greeks of so exquisite a quality that it was equivalent to an artificial marble. It could be polished, so Vitruvius tells us, till it would reflect the beholder’s face as in a mirror, and he describes how the Roman connoisseurs of his time would actually cut out plain panels of Greek stucco from old walls and frame them into the plaster work of their own rooms, just as if they were slabs of precious marble. (De Architectura, VII, iii, 10.) Vitruvius prescribes no fewer than six successive coats of plaster for a wall, each laid on before the last is dry, the last coat being of white lime and finely powdered marble.

By the Villa Farnesina at Rome some Roman, or more probably Greek, plaster decoration was discovered a few years ago that surpassed any work of the kind elsewhere known. We find there the moulded or stamped ornament Vasari describes, as well as figure compositions modelled by hand, while the plain surfaces are in themselves a delight to the artistic eye.

Among the best and best known stucco work, in figures and ornaments, of the later Italian Renaissance, may be ranked that at Fontainebleau by Primaticcio and other artists from the peninsula who were invited thither by François I, for the decoration of the ‘Galerie François I’ and the ‘Escalier du Roi.’

[183]. The composition of these two mucilages is given by Theophilus, in the Schedula, Book one, chapter 17, and also by Cennini, Trattato, chapters 110–112.

Soft cheese from cows’ milk must, according to the earlier recipe, be shredded finely into hot water and braised in a mortar to a paste. It must then be immersed in cold water till it hardens, and then rubbed till it is quite smooth on a board and afterwards mixed with quick lime to the consistency of a stiff paste. Panels cemented with this, says Theophilus, will be held so fast when they are dry that neither moisture nor heat will bring them apart. Vasari does not seem to have such faith in the mucilage, and prefers that made from boiling down shreds of parchment and other skins. The twelfth century writer knows how to make this also. See chapter eighteen of the first Book of the Schedula.

[184]. Every museum contains examples of these delicate German carvings in hard materials.

[185]. In a Note to the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, ante, p. [128] f., an account was given of some sculptures in travertine on the façade of the church of S. Luigi dei Francesi at Rome by a ‘Maestro Gian’ who has been conjecturally identified as a certain Jean Chavier or Chavenier of Rouen who worked at Rome in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Vasari in this place introduces an artist of the name of ‘Maestro Janni francese,’ and the question at once arises whether he is the same person as the ‘Maestro Gian’ of Rome.

The statue here described is to be seen in the church of the Annunziata at Florence, but not where Vasari saw it. It has been placed for about the last half century in the spacious round choir, where it occupies a niche in the wall of the second chapel to the left as one faces the high altar. It has been painted white in the hope that it may be mistaken for marble, and this characteristic performance dates from about 1857. Certain fissures observable show however that it is of wood, and one of the Frati remembers it when it was as Vasari saw it ‘nello stesso colore del legname.’ The work is shown on Plate IX. We have been unable to discover anything certain about the artist. The figure, which is in excellent preservation, speaks for itself. The Saint has a tight fitting cap over his head and curling hair and beard. His eyes are almost closed as he looks down with a somewhat affected air at his wounded leg to which the finger of his right hand is pointing. The other hand holds a staff, round which the drapery curls and over the top of which it is caught. This drapery bears out Vasari’s description of it as ‘traforato’ ‘cut into.’ It is floridly treated with the sharp angles common in the carving of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Germany, Flanders, and parts of France. M. Marcel Reymond, who has kindly given his opinion on the photographs submitted to him, has written about it as follows: ‘Le St. Roch, par la surcharge de vêtements, l’excès de reliefs, l’agitation des draperies, se rattache à l’art français tel qu’il s’était constitué au xivme siècle, et tel qu’il s’était continué jusqu’au xvime 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 xvime siècle, l’un travaillant la pierre, le travertin, l’autre travaillant le bois. C’est leur aptitude à travailler ces deux matières, que les artistes italiens travaillaient moins bien que les français qui a retenu l’attention de Vasari sur eux et qui leur a fait attribuer une place si importante dans les préfaces de Vasari.’ Our study of the originals at Rome and Florence has led us to the same opinion. The S. Rocco is Gothic in feeling, the ‘Salamander’ and other pieces at Rome are Renaissance. The Roman ‘Maestro Gian’ may be credited with an Italian style, but Vasari does not show much critical acumen when he sees ‘la maniera italiana’ in the S. Rocco of the Florentine Janni.

[186]. The first two sections, §§ 74, 75, of this chapter were added by Vasari in the second edition. They contain his contribution to the philosophy of the graphic art. It will be noted that his word ‘Disegno’ corresponds alike to our more general word ‘design’ and the more special term ‘drawing.’

[187]. This remark of Vasari is significant of the change in architectural practice between the mediaeval and modern epochs. That the architect is a man that sits at home and makes drawings, while practical craftsmen carry them out, is to us a familiar idea, but the notion would greatly have astonished the builders of the French Gothic cathedrals or the Florentines of the fourteenth century. In mediaeval practice the architect was the master of the work, carrying the scheme of the whole in his head, but busy all the time with the actual materials and tools, and directing progress rather from the scaffolding than from the drawing office. On the tombstone of the French architect of the thirteenth century, Hughes Libergier, at Reims, he is shown with the mason’s square, rule, and compasses about him; while in the relief that illustrates ‘Building’ on Giotto’s Campanile at Florence we see the master mason directing the operations of the journeymen from a position on the structure itself. In the present day there is a strong feeling in the profession that this separation of architect and craftsman, which dates from the later Renaissance, is a bad thing for art, and that the designer should be in more intimate touch with the materials and processes of building.

[188]. It is characteristically Florentine to regard painting as essentially the filling up of outlines, and to colour in staccato fashion with an assorted set of tints arranged in gradation. To the eye of the born painter outlines do not exist and nature is seen in tone and colour, while colours are like the tones of a violin infinite in gradation, not distinct like the notes of a piano. With the exception of the Venetians and some other North Italians such as Correggio and Lotto, the Italians generally painted by filling outlines with local tints graded as light, middle, and dark, and the Florentines were pre-eminent in the emphasis they laid on the well-drawn outline as the foundation of the art. Since the seventeenth century the general idea of what constitutes the art of painting has suffered a change and Vasari’s account of Florentine practice, in which he was himself an expert, is all the more interesting. Vasari’s point of view is that of the frescoist. In that process, which, as we shall see, had to be carried out swiftly and directly so as to be finished at one sitting, it was practically necessary to have the various tints in their gradations mixed and ready to hand. The whole method and genius of oil painting, as moderns understand it, is different, and its processes much more varied and subtle.

[189]. The innumerable sketches and finished drawings that have come down to us from the hands of Florentine artists testify to the importance given in the school to preliminary studies for painting, and any collection will furnish examples of the different methods of execution here described. Drawings by Venetian masters, who felt in colour rather than in form, are not so numerous or so elaborate.

[190]. That is to say, by observation of aerial as well as linear perspective.

[191]. This practice is noticed in the case of more than one artist of whom Vasari has written the biography. Tintoretto is one. See also postea, p. 216.

[192]. See the Note on ‘Fresco Painting’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 287.

[193]. Michelangelo’s greatest tour de force in foreshortening, much lauded by Vasari in his Life of the master, is the figure of the prophet Jonah on the end wall of the Sistine chapel. It is painted at the springing of the vault, on a surface that is inclined sharply towards the spectator, but the figure is so drawn as to appear to be leaning back in the opposite direction.

[194]. Correggio is responsible for many of the forced effects of drawing in the decorative painting of vaults and ceilings in later times, but the Umbrian Melozzo da Forlì in his painting of the Ascension of Christ, now destroyed save for the fragments in the Quirinal and in the sacristy of St. Peter’s at Rome, may have the doubtful honour of beginning the practice of foreshortening a whole composition, so that the scene is painted as it would appear were we looking up at it from underneath.

[195]. This truth, about the mutual influence of colours in juxtaposition, was well put by Sir Charles Eastlake when he wrote, in his Materials for a History of Oil Painting, ‘flesh is never more glowing than when opposed to blue, never more pearly than when compared with red, never ruddier than in the neighbourhood of green, never fairer than when contrasted with black, nor richer or deeper than when opposed to white.’

[196]. Vitruvius describes the fresco process in his seventh Book. See Note on ‘Fresco Painting’ at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 287. This chapter is one of the most interesting in the three ‘Introductions.’

[197]. Travertine, next to marble, makes when burnt the whitest lime (see § 30, ante, p. [86]). From this lime the fresco white, called bianco Sangiovanni, is made, and Cennini gives the recipe for its preparation in his 58th chapter. The ordinary lead white (biacca) cannot be used in fresco.

[198]. The word ‘tempera’ is used by Vasari and other writers as a noun meaning (1) a substance mixed with another, as a medium with pigments (2) a liquid in which hot steel is plunged to give it a particular molecular quality (ante, p. [30]) (3) the quality thus given to the steel (ante, p. [32]), while (4) it has come to mean in modern times, as in the heading of this Note, a particular kind of painting. It is really to be regarded as the imperative of the verb ‘temperare,’ which alike in Latin and in Italian means ‘to divide or proportion duly,’ ‘to qualify by mixing,’ and generally ‘to regulate’ or ‘to discipline.’ ‘Tempera’ thus means strictly ‘mix’ or ‘regulate.’ It is used in the latter sense in metallurgy, as the liquid which Vasari calls (ante, p. [30]) a ‘tempera’ (translated ‘tempering-bath’) regulates the amount of hardness or elasticity required in the metal, and the quality the steel thus receives is called (ante, p. [32]) its ‘temper.’ In the case of painting the ‘tempera’ is the binding material mixed with the pigment to secure its adhesion to the ground when it is dry. The painting process is, in Italian, painting ‘a tempera’ ‘with a mixture,’ and our expression ‘tempera painting’ is a loose one. For the form of the word we may compare ‘recipe,’ also employed as a substantive but really an imperative meaning ‘take.’

Strictly speaking any medium mixed with pigments makes the process one ‘a tempera.’ Many substances may be thus used, some soluble in water, as size, gum, honey, and the like; others insoluble in water, such as drying oils, varnishes, resins, etc., while the inside of an egg which is in great part oleaginous may have a place between. It is not the usage however to apply the term ‘tempera’ to drying oils or varnishes, and a distinction is always made between ‘tempera painting’ and ‘oil painting.’ See Note on ‘Tempera Painting,’ postea, p. 291.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.’

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.’

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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’).

[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.

[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.’

[216]. With the above may be compared ch. 9 of Book VII of L. B. Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.’

[228]. Does Vasari mean by ‘tempera’ yolk of egg? It has this sense with him sometimes, as in the heading of chapter VI.

[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.

[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.

[231]. See the Notes on ‘Enriched Façades,’ and ‘Stucco “Grotesques,”’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, pp. 298, 299.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[235]. As in the work described at the close of ch. XII (the beginning of the present section).

[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.

[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.

[238]. The scudo was worth in Tuscany about four-and-sixpence of our money. In Florence its value was a little greater.

[239]. See Note 1, ante, p. [248].

[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.

[241]. See Note 2, ante, p. [248].

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[257]. See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ ante, p. [119].

[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.

[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.

[260]. Lat. Evonymus Europaeus. The only English example of the family is the spindle tree.

[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.

[262]. Fra Damiano of Bergamo is mentioned by Vasari in his Life of Francesco Salviati (Opere, ed. Milanesi, VII).

[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.

[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].

[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.

[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.

[267]. See Note on ‘The Stained Glass Window’ at the close of this ‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 308.

[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.

[269]. The significance of Vasari’s demand for transparency in glass is explained in the Note, postea, p. 308.

[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.

[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.

[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.’

[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.

[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.

[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.

[276]. The red film is what Vasari understands by the ‘painting.’ This might fuse and run with the heat required to fuse the yellow.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[280]. It is curious that the chapter ends without any discussion of the chasing of gold and silver plate.

[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.

[282]. A burin is shown in Fig. 2, D, ante, p. [48].

[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.

[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).

[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.’

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.’

[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).

[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.

[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.

[295]. ‘Cavasi il ferro in sotto squadra.’

[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.

[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.’

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.