Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract
This paper provides an overview of
technical aspects of the search for
verisimilitude in seventeenth-century
Italian painting. In particular the role
of varnishing will be examined in
relation to technical problems caused
by absorbing grounds. In addition,
some theories on viewing distance
and lighting will be discussed.
Varnish, Grounds, Viewing Distance, and Lighting:
Some Notes on Seventeenth-Century Italian
Painting Technique
Helen Glanville
au Fourquet 471 20
Pardaillan
France
Introduction
In the sixteenth century, the dichotomy between Disegno and Colore, between
Titian and Raphael, was seen as one between those artists who chose to
imitate nature and those who chose the Antique as their model. In the seventeenth
century, this dichotomy could be reduced, simplistically speaking, to
two groups of artists: those who were more strongly influenced by Raphael
and the Antique and who painted with a smoother, apparently more finished
technique; and those who were more influenced by Titian and the Venetian
school of painting and the more open texture that accompanied this type of
representation of naturalistic effect-what Poussin's friend Du Fresnoy termed
"the great Lights and Shadows, the Effect of the whole together" (1). These
two tendencies have been seen to coexist through the end of the nineteenth
century.
Although these two schools differed in their approaches to handling paint,
they both subscribed to the idea that painting should be the representation
of natural appearances on a flat surface; and most importantly, that through
this representation the public should be able to grasp a higher and greater
truth. Ideas as to what form this imitation of nature should take varied, but
the essential concept can be found in the writings of theorists as divergent
in other respects as the arch-Venetian Boschini and Bellori, the epitome of
Roman Classicism (2, 3).
The first Academy of Painting, founded in 1586 by the Carracci in Bologna,
was crucial to the development of painting in seventeenth-century Italy. Painters
such as Domenichino, Reni, Albani, and Guercino (as well as Annibale
Carracci) who had come to Rome after training at the Carracci Academy
profoundly influenced their contemporaries in Rome. They brought not only
the teachings of their masters (i.e., that the painter had to emulate nature
accurately on a flat surface, while also illustrating the essence, the "Truth," of
what was depicted, that which was beyond simple appearances). This concept,
essential to painting in its newly reacquired status as a liberal art, was also in
complete accordance with the tenets laid down by the Counter-Reformation.
Two camps emerged concurrently: those who described the thing itself, and
those who described the impression on the beholder.
St. Philip Neri and Paleotti both required that artists, through verisimilitude
or realistic representation, appeal to the hearts and minds of the people.
This paper provides an overview of technical aspects of the search fo r verisimilitude
in seventeenth-century Italian painting. In particular the role of
varnishing will be examined in relation to technical problems caused by absorbing
grounds. In addition, some theories on viewing distance and lighting
will be discussed.
The use of varnish
Andre Felibien, who moved in the artistic circles of Rome in the 1640s and
who was a friend of Poussin, Guercino, and Cigoli, and probably knew Galileo,
wrote, "When a work is painted to the last degree of perfection, it can
be considered from close to [sic]: it has the advantage of appearing stronger
and three-dimensional" (4). This same effect, wrote Felibien, can be created
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice