1845.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



'69 



lead wore used in powder or ground in oil, but no excess thereof; this 

 terebintliinate being a grand preserver of lead, simply by a resinous 

 shield preventing tlie rising of the oil. Copaiba was used by me 

 in some specimens given by me to Sir Martin Archer Shee,but I fancy 

 thrown away, two years ago in pure detestation of the classics of his 

 art, and what ho emphatically termed "black pictures of the greatest 

 fools upon earth, the connoisseurs." Finally, copaiba wan used by Cor- 

 reggio, which, as I before said, was one of the three agencies used by 

 me, and is the only good diluent, in delicate proportions to be gained 

 only by practice, of solutions of glassa, which again the varnish makers 

 know nothing of — tlnir only method of treating it being by ordinary 

 practice whicli destroys its chief and strictly characteristic traits; nor 

 can any living artist, excc|)t my friend Mr. Salter, use its solution 

 without being taught from the results of practice. This glassa was 

 my rejected article for "colour" — copaiba for its "smell," which 

 greatly to my cost I mixed and modelled, steamed and distilled in vain, 

 to please the colourman. Copaiba, however, can only be used in cer- 

 tain given proportions ; first, because it begets tack ; secondly, be- 

 cause containing extractive it is disposed to turn brown by light, 

 whereas the painter requires, if possible, such agent or such quantity 

 as shall bleach by light. Copaiba proves the concluding portion of 

 my last paper, which Reynolds was ignorant of, viz. an " iiiversed law 

 0/ drying," for it is na/H/'d/Zy a bad dryer, and yet rvilh lead alone 

 cracks more than most of the hardest gums. 



The mere varnish ni.iker would reject this, as he would all soft gums 

 (as they are called), but he knows nothing of vehicle, in which it can- 

 not be too soft. And, the glorious property of glassa next to its 

 '^fow," which the innocent colourman rejects, however beautiful in 

 working, almost as iuveterately as he does its dark colour, at tlie very 

 moment he recommends Macgelp with much more colour, because " it 

 does flow," will not stand out or stand up. Now, in the lirst place, 

 every true artist knows Macgelp is infinitely more valuable for its 

 "bearing out" (for a time only), than for its "standing out," though 

 useful. And these genii of the shop little know that this inherent jlom 

 of glassa, this inimitable resemblance of molten glass can be checked 

 at our pleasure, and stand out in the highest pile upon pile, the tinest 

 imitation of muslin threads or crystal ramifications." Still has the 

 use of glassa its obvious limits; it cannot be used empirically; it has 

 no preservative power with lead, and has also some disposition to 

 brown ; and flowing surpassingly would — with oil — dispose it to rise 

 because of this flow, if not modified by the dictates of practice. 



I had intended to trace the various oils used in painting from Plu- 

 tarch's day to that of Pliny, from Apelles to Andreas Rico, and the 

 gradual changes from the " cera Punica in oleo liquefacta" to wax, 

 oil and resin. — Oil and resin with lesser quantities of wax, until solu- 

 tions of resiu in oleo de sasso, or spirituous vehicle made the picture a 

 mass of sheer brittleuess, as in the Rico picture of the Museo Mediceo 

 described by Lanzi and Tambroni ; or the pupil of Georgione ex- 

 amined by me, wliich picture, though evidently painted with oil as 

 the vehicle, was a mass of resin, as mentioned before, and blackened 

 considerably from the action of a very slight absorbent and bad gesso 

 ground ; and ultimately, as the zenith of vehicular progress, to 

 Correggio's resinous vehicle combined with glassa glazing and splendid 

 imperisliability ; but as I know Mr. C. L. Eastlake, with one of the 

 best artistic libraries in England at command, great artistic powers 

 and experience, and a brain iiitinitely better adapted to special re- 

 search, and moreover a better linguist, has it in hand or in per- 

 spective, I retire gladly to what I am more au fail in giving, mere 

 practical experience. 



I have made more than five hundred distinct experiments on panel 

 during the last year, and can preserve lead as I please. I have used 

 every artificial precipitated silicate, (not to be confounded with the 

 impostures called silica and glass media, mere trash conglomerated 

 during the borax mania, a large parcel of which I analyzed for a gen- 

 tleman three years ago,) and 1 must here defend Mr. Field against 

 the flippant remarks bc^rrowed by Mrs. Merrifield from the Davy and 

 Merimee and Taylor school. Soft glass containing lead I have de- 

 tected in several pictures; in others pumice and burned bones; and 

 as Cennino Cennini used, and almost every other great painter of 

 whom we have any record, this glass in grinding, as a separater of 

 particles, it is almost impossible, in such a day of close experience 

 and personal manipulation, that the powers of this vitreous silicate as a 

 fine dryer should iiave been neglected ; besides, we have incontestible 

 evidence that it was used for another purpose, viz. to produce rough 

 and sparkling particles in the middle painting. Ground lead glass 

 with an artificial silicate most assuredly preserves and bleaches lead 

 in oil, and prevents by fixation the rising thereof. 



Strass, or paste for Paris diamonds, flint glass alone, every sort of 



I 1 Aye, or as Mr. Salter says, a "bundle of ligliteil matchea, anliii, firm, distinct, and 

 tual ' strips of wood,' with drops of fiery, flotvln^, liquid brimstooe ! " 



flint in common, Brazil crystal, aqua-marine, and diamond dust, I caused 

 to be levigated with much labour three years ago, and found none pos- 

 sessed of this power in the manner and quantity of artistic painting; 

 if, therefore, the allegations of certain house painters and their colour 

 makers be true, with reference to flint and gieen bottle glass after cal- 

 cination, it must be from the greater quantity used in the one and 

 mixed with more boiled oil, and in the other the probable presence of 

 iron and manganese both quite incompatible with artistic use. 



Oil, I have again and again asserted, mvist not be tampered with ; 

 and I have shewn the fallacy of bleached oil, and if corroboration were 

 wanted I hiive given enough in pointing to Leonardo da Vinci,' ^ 

 whose oil was beautiful, but hi' ni^ither produced Correggio nor An- 

 selnu nor Rubeus's general elfect, neither the combined impasfa and 

 permanence of the one, nor beauty and permanence of the other. I 

 have shewn the fallacy of chlorine bleaching, though elegant and cre- 

 ditable to the bleachers; I am bound, however, to give an apparent 

 exception to my own rule — Mr. Salter by a peculiar alcoholic action 

 does good, not in bleaching, but in the abstraction of dirty mucilage 

 and water, and although I have used some hundreds of agents and 

 nitric ether among them, I cannot recollect 1 ever used alcohol, and his 

 judgment, tact, and manly perseverance, in using that which gibes and 

 jeers had turned many a man from, redounds to his credit. In two 

 centuries will his pictures be such as Wilkie's are not now, and in 

 fifty years will be less.— Ere that time they will be, on the contrary, 

 a crackling memento of genius in decay, for Wilkie tried the trick of 

 the Flemish school, viz. to produce by asphaltum and Macgelp an 

 imitation of this flow and brilliance. 



The empty assertions which blemish Mrs. Merrifield's translation of 

 Cennino Cennini, borrowed from the theoretic schools, I trust in an- 

 other edition she will erase, — such as " fFe know ultramarine can 

 preserve other colours," when it cannot preserve itself (in oil) ; "soda 

 has great preservative power," because, forsooth, soda exists in ultra- 

 marine, in whicli she forgets soda, as in glass, is a vis inertue of mat- 

 ter, so much so, fluoric acid sooner attacks its silex than its soda ; and 

 if it were not, if it were free, that is active, it would be a filthy, de- 

 structive, efflorescing, baneful agent, the curse of the Art. And if it 

 could preserve any green, dependent on alkaline agency, in the same 

 ))roportion would it destroy all other pigments, mure especially those 

 dependant on acid agents for their tones. 



But enough, alkaline lixivioe never ivere used \n oil painting at all ; 

 thev vfere used after a certain period of wax painting and during the 

 transition of the Art to oil, more as a remanet of old practice than 

 anything else, and when olive oil was actually used, the grease of 

 which it did somewhat subdue ; but a soap picture does not now exist, 

 nor did such exist at the time Andreas Rico, the Cretan, painted in 

 Candia with oil surcharged with olibanum thus, or some other gum 

 resin, and certainly not since, without Mr. Pyne has painted one in the 

 borax vehicle and plaster of Paris to astound the world ; I never saw 

 one, however, and his good sense has perhaps retouched his pictures 

 in plaster and Macgelp'^ to secure them from human eye, for like the 

 cheeks of a female mummy they would assuredly blush to be seen by- 

 man. 



Cennini had observed, like da Vinci, the rising of oil, and recom- 

 mends the use of ultramarine with all white ; this was wise, just what 

 a practical man might be supposed to teach — not because il could 

 preserve the lead, but because it would cover its yellow as the 

 laundress's powder blue does the visible change of her linen vests. 



Let us now take cause and ertect in juxta-position: let us see the 

 sources of permanence in various pictures, of various styles ; and, the 

 obvious sources of modern failure. 



T/ie Causes of Permanence in Ancient Pictures. 

 \. Better grounds, as the result of hard labour, much thought, keen 

 observance of cause and eftect, and by necessity a better adaptation to 

 the style and tempera or vehicle used thereupon. 



2. Fewer colours, and less of that which Cennini calls "torturing 

 with the brush." 



3. More transparent colours.'" Aye, and if less vivid, more faithful; 

 fur, less changeable in themselves, not having been alcliemically changed 

 or brightened, they could not retrograde. 



4. Resinous preservation the sine qua non of the Art. 



I 2 Whose method of preparing it, mentioned in my last, was found in his own hand- 

 writing, vide Beneral edition of his worlfs by C. Amorelli, Milan. 18114. «'liether Regaw's 

 ulil trunsiatiou, (so scarce, 1 Iiave not seen one for many years,) contains the account I 

 liiiow not. 



la Huw tlie lalentid editor of tlie Art Union can have permitted such at)snrdltles, 

 crudities, and empiricisms to have stamped tliem "fame" in his init I know not. Cor- 

 rcgio produce impasta in Macgelp and plaster of Paris ! Heaven and earth ! can lluidity 

 be shown by lixidity ? Can yellow-horned plaster looit the transparent beauty of his 

 deepest, dari{est shade? Kiel oh tie 1 



1 ■» Old La I'orle laughed at me, in 1828, over a picture of Uoininicheno of S. Bergcr, 

 Esil'9., at ilacliJiey, in asserting this obvious fact. 



