Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/12

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s.ix.juLY2,id2i. appointed physician to the Queen and was given a degree at Oxford. He returned to Paris, but came to England again in 1611, was made physician to the King and soon acquired a great reputation and a large circle of acquaintances and friends. He was knighted in 1624, and died at Chelsea on March 22, 1655. Mayerne, besides being one of the most enlightened and enterprising physicians of the day, was keenly interested in chemical and other kindred matters, among which were questions connected with the tech- nique of painting and pigments. In pursuit of information on this subject he used to interview eminent painters of his day, and he recorded some of the facts he gleaned from them in a manuscript book which he inaugurated in 1620 under the title ' Pictoria Sculptoria & quae subalternarum Artium.' Mayerne's library perished in the Great Fire, but some of his manuscripts have survived, and this one, now known as Sloane 2052, has found a permanent home in the British Museum. The manuscript contains references, which I hope to deal with on another occasion, to Edward Norgate, who wrote his ' Miniatura '* at Mayerne's suggestion ; but for the moment we are concerned with Samuel Cooper and incidentally with his uncle John Hoskins. On fol. 29 occurs the following passage : Tire des di scours tenus avec Mr Huskins excellent peintre En- Lumineur. Le 14 Mars 1634. Blanc Excellent se faict avec deux parts de blanc de plomb Lave selon sa facon qui est dedans ce mesme livre escripte de La main de Cupper son Nepveu & dune part de blanc de Lune mesles & broyes ensemble selon Lart. Obviously, " Lave selon sa facon " " washed in accordance with Hoskins's system " ; but Mayerne states that in this very book is Hoskins's recipe written with Cooper's hand. The recipe in Cooper's hand can be seen on fol. 77 and runs as follows : for makeing of colers redy for white lede take your whit and grind it with A little gum, and when you have dun so put it into A porindger, and when you have dun so put water to it, and stir it well to gether and let it satle A letle while and pour of the uppermost, and let it satle halfe an oure, and then pour that of also and let it satle 24 ours and then pour the watter recently edited by Mr. Martin Hardie, B.E., and published by the Oxford Press. clean from it, and put it in to a shell and temper it with gum and suger-candy, and thus doe your bys and masticot and red leade and vermilyon. The rest of the page and fol. 77 verso are filled with recipes in French in Mayerne's own hand. Fol. 78 is blank, and on fol. 78 verso is written in red ink " Enlumineur Cooper le jeune | neveu de M. Huskins februar. 1634 " whence it would appear that Cooper wrote down the recipe for Mayerne a few weeks before the latter's in- terview with Hoskins referred to on fol. 29. It is interesting to see this unique manu- script from the hand of him who was perhaps England's greatest miniature portrait- painter. The writing, in faded ink, is elegant and sloping, with flourishes to the letters " d," " y," " p," &c. ; the " s " and " c " recall those of Cooper's signature, and the letters are mostly separate from each other a feature which is often found in the handwriting of artists. Most of the eleven lines mount slightly. If little is known about Cooper, still less is known about his uncle John Hoskins. The following passage from fol. 29 verso of Mayerne's manuscript has never, as far as I am aware, been quoted in any English work dealing with Hoskins, and is therefore of considerable interest as throwing a light upon his methods of work : Huskins met touttes ses couleurs dedans des petits plateaux d'yvoire tournes, & diet quelles ne se Seichent pas comme dans les coquilles Pr travailler II a un platteau d'yvoire tourn(e) de diametre Environ quattre poulces qui se creuse lentemem vers Le milieu. II met ses couleurs en fort petite quantite Lune contre Lautre a la cir conference, & icelles premierem(ent) destrem- pees avec Eau de Gomme, & quand il sen veult I servir, II ne faict que mouiller son pinceau dedans de Leau fort nette, duquel il prend la couleur S'il veult faire quelque meslange cest au milieu de son platteau. Le blanc & les Azurs sont en des petit es couches d'yvoire a part. I may add that Mayerne's MS. was pub- lished in its entirety by Ernst Berger in his ' Quellen fur Maltechnik wahrend der Re- naissance und deren Folgezeit,' Munich, 1901, but (p. 96, line 4) he identifies wrongly the part written by Cooper, attributing to him a number of Latin recipes, which, if 1 remember rightly, are in Mayerne's own hand and have nothing to do with Cooper. Berger was misled by the position in the book of the sort of title ' l Enlumineur. Cooper le Jeune neveu de M. Huskins Februar 1634." R. S. LONG.
 * The MS. is in the Bodleian Library. It was