If any artist or others should in practising be at a loss or stand for any thing, the author shall always be willing and ready to give them farther light on any occasion.
The treatise on Practical Painting in general, which was to have been published together with this, as has been intimated to the public in an advertisement of the third of January, will be published as soon as possible; the author being engaged in a work of a very extensive nature, had not time to bring it in perfect order himself; a gentleman and friend of his has been so kind as to undertake the finishing and correcting of it; it will soon be ready for the press.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Philosoph. Transact. vol. xlix. part 2.
[2] Though the Abbé does not quote the passage, one may guess it must be the following the count undertook to explain. Pliny lib. xxxv. chap. 11.
“Ceris pingere ac picturam inurere quis primus excogitaverit non constat: quidam Aristidis inventum putant, posteà consummatum à Praxitele. Sed aliquanto vetustiores Encausticæ Picturæ exstitere, ut Polignoti & Nicanoris, & Arcesilai Pariorum. Lysippus quoque Æginæ Picturæ suæ inscripsit, ἐνεκαυσεν, quod profecto non fecisset nisi encaustica inventa.”
Which may be told in plain English thus, “Who first invented to paint with (or in) wax, and burn in (or fix) the picture with fire, is not certainly known. Some think Aristides invented it, and that Praxiteles brought it to perfection; but there were pictures by masters, of a much older date; such as of Polignote, Nicanor and Arcesilaus, all artists of Paros.
“Lysippus writ upon his pictures he burnt in, which he would not have done if the encaustic had not been invented then.”
[3] Pliny is an evidence for this my opinion; for after having said, lib. xxxv. ch. 4. Nicias scripsit se inussisse, he says, tali enim usus est verbo. Which words seem clearly to indite that Pliny thought it equivocal, or contrary to its proper signification.
[4] Both pictures were disposed of as soon as finished to a Dutch gentleman, who sent them to Holland as a pattern, and were mightily approved of.