Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

occupation agreable pour charmer l'ennui," with recipes about liqueurs, flowers,
painting secrets, and so on.
Technical treatises
The most widely read of the early painting manuals, judging by the number
of editions, was Claude Boutet's treatise on miniature painting, published in
1672, called by the author an "ABC de La mignature" (3). Following the conventions
of his time, Boutet dedicated his treatise not to the specialist but to
an amateur, a Mlle. Fouquet, who wished to perfect her abilities in the craft.
In the introduction, Boutet claims his "secrets" came from the Italians, and
states that although he could have profited by keeping them to himself, he is
giving away his knowledge fo r the benefit of others. He provides an extremely
useful summary of French painting practice in the second half of the seventeenth
century. The treatise discusses the various pigments and how to use
them, based on a three-step sequence (as in oil painting of the period) : ebaucher,
pointiller, and finally finir or rehauser.
A seventeenth-century treatise of great importance for the history of technique
is De La Fontaine's Academie de La peinture (Paris 1679), dedicated to
the tutor of the future king of France (4) . He summarizes much practical
detail, especially on pigment mixtures, mentioning dhrempc, fresco, pastel, grisaille,
and miniature as well as oil painting. He refers to the art of perspective,
which he believes a painter should know both theoretically and practically.
His dependence on Italian painting is evident, and he lists the names of the
Antique painters who have contributed to this knowledge (5). He also discusses
the origin of painting; although several "philosophers" attributed the
origin of painting to a shepherd who began to trace his shadow and saw the
resemblance to the human fo rm, De La Fontaine allows that the more common
opinion is that the discovery of painting was made by the Hebrews and
that they transmitted it to the Greeks and to the Romans. Until the late
eighteenth century, it was believed that this knowledge was then "lost," to be
"rediscovered" by "Jean de Bruges" Oan van Eyck) .
Seventeenth-century painters thus considered oil painting a "new" method
of painting, and, judging from the source books, the preparation of the medium
was obviously a vexing problem. De La Fontaine suggests nut oil with
lead white thickened by sunlight (6). He follows this with the recommendation
that in order to dry a layer oflead white, or a grisaille layer, one should
mix the white pigment with oil of turpentine, which will cause the layer to
dry as the turpentine evaporates (7). This is followed by advice on how to
prevent layers of drapery from running. He suggests placing the painting flat
on the floor or on a table and scattering small pieces of absorbent paper onto
the surface, especially onto the shadows of the drapery. When the paper has
drawn out the oil, but before the paint layer has dried, one should pick up
the painting and let it fall gently on one corner, so that the paper comes away
(8) .
Although it is not possible to go into detail about early technical practice
here, I will mention briefly De La Fontaine's method of preparing supports
for painting, methods used well into the eighteenth century. In the case of
canvas, the material was stretched onto a loom, smoothed with a pumice
stone, sized with glue, and then given a double ground, the first colored with
raw umber and red brown spread on with a knife, the second with lead white
and just enough carbon black to make gray. For panels, three layers of a fine
chalk ground ("blanc d'Espagne, comme on Ie vend chez les Chandeliers")
was recommended, with either another layer of glue on top or a gray oil
layer (9).
The Acadernie Royale and the theoretical treatises
Before 1800 the history of oil painting in France, and consequently the history
of its technique, was dominated by Italian influence. In the sixteenth
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