"The most powerful of all dryers is perhaps chloride of lime in a dry state: a small quantity of this, added to clarified oil, will convert it into a solid. For this reason it must be employed very cautiously: if too much be used, it may burn the brushes, and injure the colours. It has the advantage of not darkening the oil, and its drying property appears to arise from its absorbing the watery particles of the oil. Chloride of calcium is equally efficacious as a dryer, but the small quantity of iron which it contains dissolves in the oil, and darkens it. It seems probable that, if the chloride of lime were judiciously employed, it might prove serviceable as a dryer; but as I am not aware that it has been tried as such by any person but myself, the utmost caution would be required, and some experiments would be necessary, in order to ascertain the smallest possible quantity which would answer the purpose intended."
We are surprised to find, in the Bolognese MS., olive oil mentioned as mixed with linseed oil in equal proportions, because we never yet heard of any successful experiment to render it drying. As it is the property of olive oil to turn lighter, not, as other oils, darker, a proof of successful experiment would be valuable. Pacheco mentions "salad oil" with honey, in a mixture of flour paste for grounds; but this may have been nut-oil. Besides the passages in Vasari and Lomazzo, which attribute to Lionardo the use of distilled oil, there is the recipe in the Secreti of Alessio, which is conclusive as to the fact that linseed-oil was distilled and used to dilute amber varnish. We are aware that Mr Hendrie, in his valuable translation of Theophilus, strongly insists upon the superiority of distilled over other oil, but it does not appear ever to have been in general use.
The recommendation of amber varnish being the chief result of the commission, numerous authorities as well as recipes are given. "It appears to be mentioned in the Marciana MS., under the term 'carbone,' which has undoubtedly been written instead of 'caribe,' the Arabic and Persian term for amber." We would suggest the possibility that "carbone" may still be the right word, and mean amber, if it has been before mentioned in the MS.,—for one mode of making the varnish was to burn the amber to a "carbone," and then to grind it, as recommended in the recipe. In speaking of amber varnish as the result of Mrs Merrifield's research, we should be wrong in ascribing it to that alone; nor should we be doing justice to her own liberal and full acknowledgment of the prior recommendation of it by Mr Sheldrake in 1801, whose authority she quotes at much length, with detail of his experiments. "The use of amber varnish as a vehicle for painting, was revived and recommended so long ago as 1801, by Mr Sheldrake, in a paper published in the 19th volume of the Transactions of the Society of Arts. In these papers, Mr Sheldrake endeavours to prove that this varnish was used by the Italian painters; and as his opinion has been in a great measure confirmed by documentary evidence, his papers acquire additional interest from his having recorded the experiments made by himself in painting with this varnish."
The authority of Gerard Lairesse, given in a note, we think little of; for the work bearing his name was not written by him, but after his death, by some who professed to give an account of his instructions. There is an amusing anecdote, which is introduced for the purpose of showing that varnish was in use; we insert it for its pleasantry:—
"As an indirect proof, but not the less valuable on that account, is the following anecdote, related by Luigi Crespi of his father, Guiseppe Maria Crespi, called Lo Spagnuolo. 'One day, Cardinal Lambertini was in our house, sitting for his portrait, which my father was painting, when one of my brothers entered the room, bringing a letter, just arrived by post, from another brother who was at Modena on business. The Cardinal took the letter, and, on opening it, said to my father, 'Go on painting, and I will read it.' Having opened the letter, he began to read quickly, inventing an imaginary letter, in which the absent son, with the greatest expressions of shame and humiliation, prostrated himself at the feet of his father, begging his pardon, and saying that he had found it impossible to disengage himself from a stringent promise of marrying a certain Signora Apollonia, whence.... But he had hardly proceeded thus far, when my father leaped on to his feet, knocking over palette, pencils, and chair; and upsetting oil, varnish, and everything else which was on the little bench; and uttering all kinds of exclamations. The Cardinal jumped at the same time, to quiet and pacify him, telling him, as well as he could for laughing, that it was all nonsense, and entirely an invention of his own. Meanwhile, my father was running round the room in despair, the Cardinal following him, and thus pleasantly ended the morning's work. After this time, whenever his eminence came to see my father, before getting out of the carriage, he would whisper, That he had no doubt Signora Apollonia was at home, and with him.'"
We refer the artist-reader to the work itself, for valuable matter on the subject of grounds; we have already trespassed too far to allow of our here entering minutely into the subject. Mr Eastlake and Mrs Merrifield, however, think a knowledge of grounds of the first importance. The evidence is in favour of white grounds, of size and gesso. De Piles thinks them, however, liable to crack. And in this place Mrs Merrifield narrates, on the authority of the French painter, M. Camille Rogier, to Sig. Cigogna, who inserted it in his Inscrizeoni Veneziane, a circumstance which strongly savours of the astute exchange of armour in the Iliad—brass for gold. Owing to the gesso or white tempera ground, it is said that the celebrated Nozze di Cana, by Paolo Veronese, was in such a condition as to render it necessary to line it very carefully, to prevent the paint scaling from the canvass. "But when, in 1815, the picture was about to be restored to Venice, according to the treaty, it was perceived that the colours crumbled off and fell into dust at the slightest movement. To continue the operation, therefore, was to expose one of the finest works of the Venetian school to certain destruction; and the committee decided that the picture of Paolo should remain at Paris, and that a painting of Lebrun's should be sent to Venice in its stead." "Credat Judæus!" If this were so—if the picture was really in that condition, how could it have been lined? and if it could, by any care, bear the necessary rough usage and removals of lining, would it not have borne careful conveyance? The French are able diplomatists. We think Mr Peel, and much less experienced liners, must laugh at the simplicity of the committee. Were they a committee on the Fine Arts? We have heard of valuable pictures having been smuggled into this country, with other pictures painted over them—if the proof which satisfied the committee, (if the story have any real foundation of truth,) had been a free pass through the custom-house, we have not the slightest doubt our picture-dealers would have readily supplied it, and have skilfully so attached dry colours as to peel off on the slightest shaking. We should rather give credence to the glazings of Titian flying off to the glass, than to this supposed danger of removal from the cause ascribed.
In now taking leave of Mrs Merrifield, we express our hope that, having so ably and so faithfully done the work confided to her by the Commission on the Fine Arts, she will not think her labours at an end; for we are quite sure that her judicious mind and clear style may be most profitably employed in the service of art, to whose practical advancement she has contributed so much.
TENNYSON'S POEMS.[11]
There is no living poet who more justly demands of the critic a calm and accurate estimate of his claims than Alfred Tennyson; neither is there one whom it is more difficult accurately and dispassionately to estimate. Other living and poetical reputations seem tolerably well settled. The older bards belong already to the past. Wordsworth all the world consents to honour. Living, he already ranks with the greatest of our ancestors. His faults even are no longer canvassed; they are frankly admitted, and have ceased to disturb us. Every man of original genius has his mannerism more or less disagreeable; once thoroughly understood, it becomes our only care to forget it. No one now thinks of discovering that Wordsworth is occasionally, and especially when ecclesiastical themes overtake him, sadly prosaic; no one is now more annoyed by this than he is at the school divinity of Milton, or the tangled, elliptical, helter-skelter sentences into which the impetuous imagination of Shakspeare sometimes hurries him. Moore, another survivor of the magnates of the last generation, has judgment passed upon him with equal certainty and universality. He, with a somewhat different fate, has seen his fame collapse. He no longer stalks a giant in the land, but he has dwindled down to the most delightful of minstrel-pages that ever brought song and music into a lady's chamber. So exquisite are his songs, men willingly forget he ever attempted anything higher. We have no other remembrance of his Lalla Rookh than that he has embedded in it some of those gems of song—some of those charming lyrics which scarcely needed to be set to music; they are melody and verse in one. They sing themselves. If his fame has diminished, it has not tarnished. It has shrunk to a little point, but that little point is bright as the diamond, and as imperishable. Of the poets more decidedly of our own age and generation, there are but few whom it would be thought worth while to estimate according to a high standard of excellence. The crowd we in general consent to praise with indulgence, because we do not look upon them as candidates for immortality, but merely for the honours of the day—a social renown, the applause of their contemporaries, the palm won in the race with living rivals.