Holt, Literary Sources of Art History
The present volume has been compiled in response to the ever increasing demand for the original documents on the arts. Its aim is to add freshness and solidity to the study of the history of art by making available the words of the artists themselves and of other persons concerned. The materials lifted here from the graves of old books in old libraries— the letters of Diirer and Annibale Carracci, Cellini, Rubens, Rembrandt; stories of fires and miracles from old chronicles; recipe books for apprentices; Chantelou’s journal of the travels of Bernini; the record of the trial of Veronese for claiming poetic license for painting; the suit brought against Rembrandt; the poems of Michelangelo, and treatises on painting and architecture from the days when it was permissible to spice theory with speculation—are fit to put new life and plastic quality into the familiar story of the evolution of styles.
Here, in a passage from the chronicle of the Cluniac monk Raul Glaber in about the year 1000, the student may read how, “when art was in the service of the church,” the churches were built by wonders rather than engineers. Or, in Theophilus’ Schedula, he may follow step by step the production of gold leaf, and see within and through the shining gold the ground of red color burnt from sinoper polished with a beaver’s tooth and beaten later with brass mallet on a smooth anvil. Other processes too are outlined here: how to make a lovely violet color, how to acquire a good mountain style, how to train a lion, and how to portray the passions. In every case new planes seem to be introduced into the flat image and the flat story.
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