282 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

appears; first, the ‘gesso grosso,’ then, next the painted surface, the ‘gesso sottile.’ On scraping this it is found that it is whitest immediately next the colours; for on the inner side it may sometimes have received slight stains from the wood, if the latter was not first sized. When a picture which happens to be much cracked has been oiled or varnished, the fluid will sometimes penetrate through the cracks into the ground, which in such parts had become accessible. In that case the white ground is stained in lines only, corresponding in their direction with the cracks of the picture. This last circumstance also proves that the ground was not sufficiently hard in itself to prevent the absorption of oil. Accordingly, it required to be rendered non-absorbent by a coating of size; and this was passed over the outline, before the oil-priming was applied.”-Ib., pp. 383, 384.

The perfect whiteness of the ground being thus secured, a transparent warm oil-priming, in early practice flesh-coloured, was usually passed over the entire picture. This custom, says Mr. Eastlake, appears to have been “a remnant of the old habit of covering tempera pictures with a warm varnish, and was sometimes omitted.”¹ When used it was permitted to dry thoroughly, and over it “the shadows were painted in with a rich transparent brown, mixed with a somewhat thick oleo-resinous vehicle;”² the lighter colours were then added with a thinner vehicle, taking care not to disturb the transparency of the shadows by the unnecessary mixture of opaque pigments, and leaving the ground bearing bright through the thin lights. (?) As the art advanced, the lights were more and more loaded, and afterwards glazed, the shadows being still left in untouched transparency. This is the method of Rubens. The later Italian colourists appear to have laid opaque local colour without fear even into the shadows, and to have recovered transparency by ultimate glazing.

27. Such are the principal heads of the method of the early Flemish masters, as stated by Mr. Eastlake. We have marked as questionable the influence of the ground in supporting the lights: our reasons for doing so we will give,

¹ [Eastlake, p. 388.]

² [Quotation marks have in this edition been here inserted, as the words are quoted textually from Eastlake, p. 389; the words following being a summary of Eastlake’s pages 389-390.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]