What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna

THE BEAUTIFUL REDDISH LIGHT OF THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE 185
FIG. 10 The philosopher’s garden. From Christianus Balduinus, Aurum
superius & inferius aurœ superius & inferius hermeticum (Frankfurt and
Leipzig: Georg Heinrich Frommann, 1675).
greens, pinks, purples, and browns. At the top margin, just right
of center, is a smooth rosy patch that must have been painted
toward the end, but other than that nothing can be untwined.
Some shadows are deep in the fabric—like the ones at the top left
—but some others lie in defiance of the ordinary rules of painting,
on top of the other marks. The distinct shadow just to the lowerright
of the center of the detail is painted over all the folds of
white: the proof is its right margin, where a bright brushstroke
passes underneath it. A second dark shadow at the extreme
bottom is also painted on top of the other marks.
This is sublime painting. Its shimmering layers and evanescent
tints are the stuff of painting: they are entirely and insistently
paint, and yet at every moment they seem to deliquesce and melt
away into air. The paint is at the moment of evaporation, where
it will leave the canvas behind and become what Tintoretto