Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract

Two texts from Simone de Monte
Dante's medieval Italian manuscript
are presented here in English transla­
tion. With their many recipes, these
texts shed light on the technique
and materials of fifte enth-century
Italian manuscript illumination and
the historical development of the il­
luminator's craft. Studying the rela­
tionship of this manuscript to other
treatises may provide a better under­
standing of the mechanisms involved
in the adaptations and transmission
of medieval art technology.

Figure 1. Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense,

MS 1793, cover.

Figure 2. Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense,

MS 1793, jol. 10v.

38

Libro Secondo de Diversi Colori e Sise da Mettere a Oro:

A Fifteenth-Century Te chnical Treatise on Manuscript

Illumination

Arie Wallert

The Getty Conservation Institute

Museum Services Laboratory

The J. Paul Getty Museum

17985 Pacific Coast Highway

Malibu, California 90265

USA

Introduction

The Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome holds a very interesting fifte enth-cen­

tury technical art manuscript. It has the shelf mark "MS 1793" and shows on

fo lio 2r ("r" fo r recto) the author's name and the date of the manuscript:

"Questo libro et ne di Simone de Monte Dante dela Zazera ... 10 chopiai

el mese di novembre 1422" (Fig. 1).

The manuscript contains two closely related treatises on fo lios 10v-13v ("v"

for verso) and 15v-20v. Written in different hands, these texts contain recipes

devoted to the practice of manuscript illumination. Various aspects of the art

are described, such as ink production, parchment preparation, gold leaf ap­

plication, and the preparation and application of pigments and various trans­

parent organic colorants.

The recipes in the Simone manuscript are not related to the well-known

Mappae Clavicula tradition, the texts from Theophilus' Schedula de Diversarum

artium, the Eraclius texts, or the texts of the Liber de Coloribus. What makes

this manuscript so important is the fact that it appears to be related to a

particular group of technical art treatises comprising a number of little­

known, mostly unpublished recipe texts that are specifically devoted to the

miniaturist's craft.

The relationships of parts in Simone's treatise with those manuscripts in the

Siena Biblioteca Comunale, the Modena Biblioteca Estense, the Bologna Bib­

lioteca Universitaria, the Oxford Bodleian Library, and the Florence Bibli­

oteca Nazionale are quite intriguing. The recipes of both treatises in Simone's

manuscript are given here in translation, with notes indicating the relation­

ships to other recipe texts, as well as references to relevant technical literature

(1).

Relationships to recipes in the well-known Bolognese manuscript are referred

to according to the numbering and pagination of Merrifield's edition (2).

Relationships with two treatises in the Siena Biblioteca Comunale fo llow the

numbering in Wallert's edition (3). To facilitate the understanding of these

relationships, Simone's recipes-originally not numbered-are given numbers

in brackets in this translation.

The Simone manuscript is clearly not written by a person with a firsthand

knowledge about the products and techniques he describes. Occasionally,

Simone prescribes the wrong ingredients, gives only part of a recipe, or

gives some recipes in which the final outcome clearly will not be the result

promised by the heading; obviously, he was not a craftsman. Sometimes his

descriptions are too succinct to be fu lly understood by the uninitiated or

modern reader. In those cases I have added to the Simone text, placing these

additions in brackets to distinguish them from the original text and to make

the recipes more intelligible.

With fo lio 10v, Simone begins a book on various colors and grounds to lay

gold (Fig. 2). Following is the text of fo lios 10v-13v (page changes in the

original will be noted here with the symbol {}):

Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice