280 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

laminæ. This, “che tiene della natura del mallo,” Leonardo supposes to give the expressed oil its property of forming a skin at the surface.¹

25. We think these passages interesting, because they are entirely opposed to the modern ideas of the desirableness of yellow lights and green blues, which have been introduced chiefly by the study of altered pictures. The anxiety of Rubens, expressed in various letters, quoted at p. 516, lest any of his whites should have become yellow, and his request that his pictures might be exposed to the sun to remedy the defect, if it occurred, are conclusive on this subject, as far as regards the feeling of the Flemish painters: we shall presently see that the coolness of their light was an essential part of their scheme of colour.

The testing of the various processes given in these two chapters must be a matter of time: many of them have been superseded by recent discoveries. Copal varnish is in modern practice no inefficient substitute for amber, and we believe that most artists will agree with us in thinking that the vehicles now in use are sufficient for all purposes, if used rightly. We shall, therefore, proceed in the first place to give a rapid sketch of the entire process of the Flemish school as it is stated by Mr. Eastlake in the 11th chapter, and then examine the several steps of it one by one, with the view at once of marking what seems disputable, and of deducing from what is certain some considerations respecting the consequences of its adoption in subsequent art.

26. The ground was with all the early masters pure white, plaster of Paris, or washed chalk with size; a preparation which has been employed without change from remote antiquity-witness the Egyptian mummy-cases. Such a ground, becoming brittle with age, is evidently unsafe on canvas,

¹ [The passage cited from Amoretti’s Memorie Storiche, etc. di Leonardo da Vinci, is thus translated by Eastlake: “Walnuts are covered with a husk or rind [in the original, Le noci sono fasciate da una certa bucciolina che tiene della natura del mallo]; if you do not remove this when you extract oil from them, the colouring matter of this skin becomes separated from the oil and rises to the surface of the picture, and this is what causes the alteration of pictures.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]