I built in the middle of one of my large rooms—and I mean exactly in the middle—a little wall about one cubit from the ground, four cubits long, and one-and-a-half wide; and after fitting the parts to the body I bound them on with silver wire instead of iron wire which is usually employed, and in this way, doing three fingers’ width at a time, and not without the greatest difficulty, I bound the two legs to the body. Then I laid it on the wall over a good fire, and applied quinto to it, i.e., solder composed of one-fifth of an ounce of copper to one of silver—I say copper not bronze,[166] because copper is easier to treat with the punches and holds better, albeit it does not run quite so easily. As I worked with eleven-and-a-half silver to half copper[167] I had nothing to fear as far as the latter was concerned; & I would have everyone aware that if he wish to make his job succeed he must not employ inferior silver.
When my work lay in position I began, with four of my young men, to blow the fire with the aid of fans and hand-bellows until I saw the solder run, when I every now and then sprinkled a little soft ash over it, for if one were to use water instead of ash, one would not be able to add fresh solder where the old has run imperfectly. In this manner, following just the method I have described, I happily succeeded in soldering the whole piece with breast, legs, arms, & head; & ere ever a piece cooled I managed to solder it on; the whole thing succeeded most admirably, & was just lovely! So the entire statue, which was about four cubits high, was lifted off the fire all soldered; I cleaned it up with the tools for cleaning, which I described before, filled it with pitch, and gave it the final polish with the punches. Then I fixed it on a base of bronze, the latter about two-thirds of a cubit high, with sundry little subjects in bas-relief gilded and beautifully executed. The statue in question was a figure of Jupiter[168] holding the lightning bolt in his right hand, and from the lightning a torch was kindled; in his left he held a ball to symbolise the world. Round the head and the feet was abundance of ornamental detail; & all this was admirably gilded, the which was most difficult to do.
Nor will I omit to tell how I cleaned[169] up the silver of so large a piece of work, albeit I have already described to you the process of cleaning silver, for there were exceptional difficulties in this case. I did it thuswise: I went to the shop of a dyer of woollen cloth and got one of his big vessels,[170] large enough to put my figure in, which, as I said, was about four cubits high, and weighed about 300 lbs.; then I took four iron rods, each about four cubits long, and four chestnut staves, somewhat longer than the iron rods. When the figure was carefully cleaned of its solder, and made smooth and polished and carefully pumiced over, we lifted it with the four iron rods on to a big bed of coal spread out on the ground, and large enough to hold the figure. This we did not do, however, till the coals were burnt out, had lost their vigour, and were well spent; then we covered the figure all over, shovelling the embers upon it, a very tiring job this, as you may imagine, because of the heat and fume of the embers. We went on shovelling them about over the statue wherever the need was, till the whole piece was of an equal red heat all over. Then we raised it with the four iron rods, let it cool, and when it was cold had ready our vessel[171] with the blanching solution,[172] that is to say, water with tartar and salt composed as I described to you above, and into it we placed the figure by means of the four wooden staves, for the solution must not be touched by iron. When inside we stirred it about and scrubbed it all over with certain big hog sable brushes much like those used for whitening walls & objects of similar size. When we saw it getting white, we took it with great care out of this vessel and put it into another similar one, but filled with pure water, & here we carefully washed all the blanching solution off it. Then we poured off the water and dried it very carefully; after which we set to gilding whatever parts had to be gilded. Though the gilding of this statue was a much harder job than you can possibly imagine, I do not intend here to enter into those difficulties of detail, but will confine myself to saying a word or two about gilding in general. Forsooth, it is a beautiful and marvellous craft this, & it well becomes your big masters to know of it, so that they may guide such as practise professionally. I knew many, both in France and in Rome, who applied themselves only to gilding. But none the less I say that great masters ought not to practise this themselves, for the quicksilver that has to be used for it is a deadly[173] poison, and so wears out the men that practise in it that they live but a few years.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] Lamine.
[159] From the point of view of the Italian cinquecento Master it would be correct thus to render the word ‘arte’ in this context.
[160] ‘Legar la’ Brinckman translates ‘rivetting.’
[161] I am not sure whether this gives the right shade of meaning to ‘attestarsi,’ but I follow Brinckman.
[162] Virtù.
[163] Virtù del martello.