[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.