Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

While cooking their eggs, two young Spartans quarreled over a piece if
cheese which had just disappeared in the frying pan. Both young men armed
themselves with a spoon and searched the scrambled eggs, but in vain. The
cheese was gone. They came to blows, one claiming the cheese was still
there, the other that it had disappeared, carried off by a genie. The noise
if this battle drew a crowd, and the cause if the dispute became known.
It was suggested that the experience be repeated. The ability if egg yolk
to dissolve cheese was recognized.
The author consoled himself that he was not the first to have discovered this
secret, and so made it public, congratulating himself on his generosity. Others
might have kept the critical ingredient secret in an attempt to profit from it.
Selling his secret would have been understandable, after all, as reimbursement
fo r the heavy expenses in eggs and cheese. Rouquet continues his description
with all the seriousness of a technical treatise:
Mix gruyere cheese cut in f ine strips with two beaten egg yolks over a bainmarie
until the cheese has melted. For the question of a support fo r the
paintinsince cheese does not adhere well to panel or canvas, it is better
to follow its natural association with bread. Therifore, take flour and make
dough with a little milk. Finally, it would be bemificial to add a bitter
substance to discourage worms, mice, and children from eating the paintings.
However, by leaving it out, poor painters could at least dine on their own
paintings.
Conclusion
As we approach the twenty-first century, our curiosity increases about how
paintings of past generations were created. More and more, we look toward
modern methods of scientific analysis to answer our questions about historical
painting materials, but a return to the written sources on painting techniques
is an important first step toward a proper understanding. By definition, painters
are practically oriented, however, and have rarely composed with the pen
as well as the brush; records of their materials and techniques must be plucked
from various publications. Undoubtedly during the coming decades, historians
of painting technique will be recovering more information from the
source books about the history of studio practice, painting materials, and
techniques.
Notes
1. Patent rights existed in Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, but enforcement
came only much later; in order to benefit from a discovery, the inventor still
relied on secrecy. Singer gives an example involving an improvement to the
system of production of liquid bleach made in 1789 fo r which the patent owner
enjoyed the protection of his patent for only four years. Singer, c., et al. 1958.
A history oj technology (4): Oxford, 247.
2. A book of secrets, Essay des merveilles de nature et des plus nobles entifices (Rouen,
1622), proved so popular that by 1657, it was already in the thirteenth edition.
The author was Etienne Binet, the pseudonym of Rene Franyois, Predicateur
du Roy.
3. Boutet, C. 1672. Traite de la mignature, pour apprender aisement a peindre sans martre,
et Ie secret de Ja ire les plus belles couleurs, I'or bruny, et I'or en coquille, Paris. Other
editions were published with slight variations in the title and contents. Some
editions appeared anonymously as Escole de la mignature. At least twenty-five
editions were published between 1674 and 1800.
4. De La Fontaine. 1679. L'Academie de la peinture [etc.], Paris. De La Fontaine
dedicates his treatise to "Mesire Charles de Sainte Maure, . .. Gouverneur de
Monseigneur Ie Dauphin," for the education of the future king. Two other important
treatises of the seventeenth century are now available in facsimile editions.
These are Bernard Dupuy du Grez's 1699 Traite sur la peinture pour en apprendre
la theorie, & se peifectionner dans la pratique, To ulouse: J & A. Pech; and Le Blond
de la Tour's 1669 Lettre a un de ses amis, contenant quelques instructions touchant la
peinture. Bourges et Bordeaux. By the eighteenth century, the number of treatises
Massing 27