Northern
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Specializing
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Northern
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Specializing
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Phoebe Dent Weil / Northern Light Studio, LLC
1602 Locust Street, Suite 815-A, St. Louis, MO 63103 / (314) 588-9680/ PDWeil@aol.com
http:/ /www.northernlightstudio.com
Prepared for the St. Louis Art Museum Class on Italian 1 ~ c. Painting Techniques 31 August-5 October 2002
References, see: Vasari, Proemio; Armenini, p. 41, pp. 63 if; Borghini, pp. 137 ff; Orfeo Boselli, Osservazioni della Scoltura Antica, ch. 10 "Del Disegno e che sia", (MS. Rome, 1650's) P.D. Weil, ed.and notes (Florence:SPES) 1978. Crispijn van de Passe, Della luce deldipingere et disegnare, Amsterdam, 1643; E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, London, 1966, pp. 156-68 (on teaching practices and how-to-draw books); J. Watrous, The Craft of Old Master Drawings, Madison, WI, 1957.
Paper: In addition to white or off-white, two popular types of toned paper: turchina : pale blue
made with indigo dye, which seems to have originated in Venice in the latter 15th c.and used throughout Italy by the 17th c; beretta: greenish-gray. The paper could also be toned with washes, e.g. with bistre or tinted gesso thinly applied. Chalk (It. lapis, lapis negro, lapis rosso etc.): black, red, white, trimmed with a knife and held in a tocha lapis (Fr. porte-crayon) (chalk holder); also charcoal, graphite, and lead white in watercolor form for highlights.
Pen: quill
Ink: Lamp black plus gum water; also iron gall ink made from oak galls soaked in water for several days and then adding some ferrous sulfate to make a deep violet, browns with age and occasionally eats away the paper if acid content is too high; bistre made from resinous wood soot. (See photos of iron gall ink being made in our workshop. http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/ink/index.html is a website about iron gall ink)
Canvas: typically linen, plain or twill weave, attached by tacks to a strainer. (Note: The stretcher was invented shortly prior to 1775.) For Rome, 17th c., typically plain (tabby) weave with density of7 to 8 threads per cm2, i.e. fairly coarse weave, giving a craquelure pattern of small squares. For large paintings canv~ses were typically pieced and sewn together.
Wood panel: prepared with a layer of rabbit skin glue and one or more layers of gesso. For oil painting, to counteract the excessive absorbency of the gesso ground, the panel was covered with an imprimatura or priming of ogliaccio (nasty or dirty oil) probably based on sediment from cleaning the brushes and palette, to reduce but not totally remove the absorbency of the gesso and to provide a toned ground, even or streaky.
Copper: prepared with one or more very thin layers of lead white or lead white plus small amounts of red or yellow ochre and carbon black in linseed oil [see: Isabel Horovitz, "The Materials and Techniques of European Paintings on Copper 1575-1775"
Glue size: applied hot or cold to isolate the oil-based ground from the canvas
Ground:Applied with a priming knife. Preliminary layer to fill interstices of canvas weave and provide a smoother painting surface, of white gesso in Italy up to end of 16dt c. Colored grounds were used in the early 16th century in North Italy by e.g. Correggio, Dosso Dossi and Parmigianino. By 1600 colored grounds were common practice and available commercially (Orazio's accounts noting purchase of "tele impremite") throughout Italy and in the North, typically a double ground, the first (lowest) a red-brown, composed of any or all of the following: leadwhite, red and/or yellow ochre, umber, chalk, or gesso, and carbon black; the second, referred to as the imprimatura, applied by the artist in the studio, was typically a cool gray, composed of lead-white and carbon black. The second layer is occasionally omitted, typical for Caravaggio, and often in Artemisia. There were a number of alternatives such as the use of a white preliminary ground followed by a thin, streaky warm-toned imprimatura (Rubens), or a white preliminary ground followed by an even-toned pinkish or buff-colored imprimatura (Vermeer).
Underdrawing/ undermodeling:
Note on use of sgraffitto outlines:
Dead coloring, (It. sbozzo): blocking in the main areas of color. Dead coloring could be different from and have a particular desired effect on the surface color.
Painting / glazing (velare, velatura) / wet-on-wet / oiling out:
Varnish: -"amber varnish"(probably copal and colophony) used selectively and not overall, in Orazio's paintings for "oiling out" where medium has sunk in (prosciugare) and to produce smooth effects in paint applied subsequently. Both drying oils and resins were used. Not much physical evidence remains because of subsequent cleaning to remove discolored coatings. Various opinions regarding the use of varnish can be found in the 17th c.(see: Felibien; Marco Boschini, La Carta del NavegarPittoresco, Venice 1660; Baldinucci, "11 Lustrato"; De Mayerne) etc.
Brush (It. penello, old English pencill or pensill): -two types: bristle from hogs 'hair (setola) and those made from finer hair, like the polecat (puzzola), minever (vaio) and badger (tasso) [see: Rosamond Harley, "Artists' Brushes-Historical Evidence from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century"]
Mahlstick (or maulstick): stick, about a yard long, with padded end used to support and steady
the hand while painting.
Palette (It.tavoletta, tavoloua): -fine-grained wood (walnut or boxwood)
Easel (It. palcho)--:
Pincelier: container for solvent for cleaning brushes
Color grinding equipment: grinding slab (preferably porphyry) and grinding stone or muller
Linseed oil: from the flax plant. Stand oil is linseed oil thickened by heating in the absence of oxygen.
Walnut oil:
Poppy seed oil:
"Amber varnish from Venice of the kind used for lutes":-mentioned by de Mayerne as used by Orazio (and Artemisia) G., "especially for the flesh areas so that the whites can be applied more easily and give a sweeter effect. In this way he works at his leisure without waiting for the colors to dry completely." Orazio's "amber varnish" was probably a combination of colophony and copal resins recently identified in the Getty Lot (see: Mark Leonard, et.al., "'Amber varnish' and Orazio Gentileschi's 'Lot and his daughters"')
Various resins: Sandarac, mastic, damar, colophony (pece Greca), Venice turpentine, etc
cangiante: -literally "changing"--Italian term for shot fabrics-i.e. fabrics with warp and weft in different colors so that the color changes depending on angle and direction of light-In painting, drapery has different hues in the light and dark areas, and shadows are without black, but rather a pure color
contorni: outline, extolled by Pliny, Alberti, Annenini and theoreticians through mid-17th c. as a great challenge in disegno. The importance of contorno over ombra (shadow) was an important tenet of the classicists, beginning with the Carracci, and was used to demonstrate the "erring ways" of Caravaggio.
calco, calcare, ricalcare, incisione indiretta: stylus tracing or incision.
graticola: -device made with strings stretched on a rectangular frame to form a square grid The strings could be chalked and snapped against a wall, canvas or other surface to transfer the grid pattern. A smaller scale drawing could then be squared off with a ruler and copied with reasonable accuracy to the surface squared off with the graticola.
lucidi: tracing paper made by applying oil, e.g. walnut oil to paper to make it translucent According to the Volpato MS., the design could thus be traced in charcoal or colored chalk. If this design was to be transferred onto canvas, a piece of paper covered on the lower side with chalk was placed between this oiled paper and the canvas. 'By means of a bone needle or a metal stylus, the lines on the oiled paper were pressed onto the canvas, the chalk covered paper in berween leaving impressed all the marks which were indented with the needle. In order to transfer the design on to white paper, the middle paper was covered with charcoal, or with red or black chalk. (See: Beal, M., Symonds)
spolvero: -technique of transferring a drawing to another surface, e.g. cartoon to canvas or wall. The drawing was perforated along the lines and applied to the intended surface. The punched lines were pounced with a small bag of charcoal dust producing a dotted line on the canvas or wall.
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