Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/65

Rh art of making pictures “in tavola” as durable as those executed on the wall, as well as that of so treating them that they might be washed without removing the colours, and would endure without injury whatever concussion they might be subjected to in the process of execution. To discuss all these things, considerable numbers of artists frequently assembled, and had often held long disputations thereon, but always without any useful result.

A similar wish was at the same time felt by many of the elevated minds devoted to painting beyond the confines of Italy; by the painters of France, that is to say, of Spain, of Germany, and other countries It happened, therefore, when matters stood at this pass, that Giovanni da Bruggia working in Flanders, and much esteemed in those parts for the great skill which he had acquired in his calling, set himself to try different sorts of colours; and being a man who delighted in alchemy, he laboured much in the preparation of various oils for varnishes and other things, as is the manner of men of inventive minds such as he was. Now, it happened upon a time, that after having given extreme labour to the completion of a certain picture, and with great diligence brought it to a successful issue, he gave it the varnish and set it to dry in the sun, as is the custom. But, whether because the heat was too violent, or that the wood was badly joined, or insufficiently seasoned, the picture gave way at the joinings, opening in a very deplorable manner. Thereupon, Giovanni, perceiving the mischief done to his work by the heat of the sun, determined to proceed in such a manner that the same thing should never again injure his work in like manner. And as he was no less embarrassed by his varnishes than by the process of tempera painting, he turned his thoughts to the discovery of some sort of varnish that would dry in the shadow, to the end that he need not exr pose his pictures to the sun. Accordingly, after having made many experiments on substances, pure and mixed, he finally discovered that linseed oil and oil of nuts dried more readily than any others of all that he had tried. Having boiled these oils therefore with other mixtures, he