Vivante Drawings

At Villa Lante, about an hour north of Rome, there are beautiful box hedges and parterre.  Box, like birch bark, has been used as a surface for drawing. Some of the box hedges at Villa Lante are very tall, and if you look into the center of the hedges, you’ll see trunks thicker than you would imagine–wide enough for small rectangular drawing supports.

Villa Lante | Box and Watercourse for Fountains | Bagnaia, Italy

Early draftsmen used boxwood to make model-books where they could record successful compositions, poses, and subjects for future use. Boxwood, because of its great density and because it could be smoothed to a high degree, was the wood of choice. Parchment, fig wood, and paper were also used. Cennino Cennini, writing in circa 1400, tells of how to prepare a boxwood drawing surface in Chapter V of his Libro dell’arte (English here) and and in Chapter VI he talks of fig wood, specifying that the fig wood should be old.  To make a little panel, he calls for pieces of wood as high and wide as “un sommesso.” According to the 1612 Crusca dictionary, a sommesso is the width of a fist with the thumb extended, as in the hitchhiking gesture. For me, that is about 6 inches (I’ve seen some translations of Cennini say 9 inches, which seems too much. There’s a limit to box trunk width.) Whether box or fig, he says to clean it well, smooth with a cuttlebone, dry, and then coat with well ground bone dust and spittle.

There are too few examples of model books, and especially boxwood ones. I don’t think there are any early drawings on fig wood tablets. The drawing on box just below is given to a Jaques Daliwe. The attribution to Daliwe is based solely on an inscription on one of the 12 pages that make up the Berlin model book. The inscription might also refer to an owner of the model-book. There are a total of 22 drawings, mostly in metalpoint with white heightening. A couple of the drawings are based on illuminations of the Limbourg Brothers, though this one is not. If boxwood grew to be bigger, would they have wanted larger drawings, or were they happy to have a book that was so easily transportable to bring along to their various jobs?

Jaques Daliwe | Head Studies | Metalpoint, brush and white heightening on grounded boxwood panel | 89 x 130 mm | Liber picturatus A 74 Staatsbibliothek Berlin

Soon after the introduction of paper, artists were applying chalky colored grounds to create metalpoints and tinting the surface of paper for ink and chalk drawings.  The earliest European papers are white or cream or ivory, depending on how one sees them. The earliest drawing on a piece of blue paper, blue through and through, is a drawing in Dresden (detail below).  The drawing is by Giovanni da Modena, who, most notably, painted frescoes in Bologna’s San Petronio. It’s dated to around 1410-20 and has been gone over, or reinforced, by later hands. Still, there’s a lot to the drawing. It’s on a single piece of paper, measuring 460 mm across, which makes it extraordinarily large.

Giovanni da Modena | Procession, detail of | 1410-20 | Traces of black chalk, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, white heightening, on blue laid paper, with some pricking | 342 x 460 mm | Kupferstich-Kabinett | Dresden

Ceninno Cennini was writing his manual for artists shortly before the Giovanni da Modena drawing was made, and speaks at length about carta tinta, but not about dyed paper. His method for tinting paper blue, what he termed carta di tinta indica involves mixing white with indigo, 2 fava bean size lumps of indigo. Indigo, as it sounds, was imported from India, and had been since antiquity. The Giovanni da Modena drawing’s blue also comes from indigo. Other sources of blue dye available then came from the woad plant and litmus, made from lichens. The earliest blue paper might have come from ragged blue clothes, and dye a later refinement.The photograph just below is of two blue overalls hanging to dry in a nearby piazza, and it would be nice to think that their ancestors were recycled into drawing paper. Synthetic indigo was introduced by Adolf Bayer in 1880.

Blue Work Clothes | Rome

Carta azzurra is most associated with Venice. Vittore Carpaccio was an early user of blue paper. Albrecht Dürer took up using blue paper for his drawings during his 1505-07 stay in Venice and is credited with introducing the paper to artists over the alps. The Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius was the first to print books on blue paper. Blue paper, really any colored paper, is often used with two media, such as black ink and white liquid heightening, or black chalk with white chalk heightening. The blue is the middle value which the dark and light play off. Since it’s such an appealing color for drawings, artists everywhere have used blue paper.

Vittore Carpaccio | Portrait of a Young Man | c. 1500 | Brush, brown ink and white heightening on blue laid paper | 260 x 185 mm | Christ Church | Oxford

S e a s o n ‘ s   G r e e t i n g s

Deer's Head Watermark | Briquet 15541 | Brabant 1449

While the Chinese, Arabs, and Spanish all had paper before the Italians, they were the first to watermark paper. Watermarks are areas of the paper where an identifying mark is left by bent wire in the screen mold. The marks range from a simple circle to the most elaborate escutcheons.  Almost all catalogues of prints and drawings published in recent years have an appendix with watermarks. Researching watermarks has become easier now that the standard reference books Briquet and Piccard are online.   The table below, with links, shows several online resources. For a discussion about the ways of recording watermarks, here is a link to an article published by Nancy E. Nash in an American Institute for Conservation publication. Neil Harris’s work Paper and watermarks, published in 2010 and available online, is very engaging and full of important information and references for the study of watermarks. It seems beta-radiography is one of the best ways of recording watermarks, but this is impractical for most people. With my drawings, I use my laptop as a light table, position a ruler near the drawing, and take a photograph. I should also say that it is very, very seldom that I successfully match a watermark.

Detached Fresco | Style II | House of the Cryptoporticus | Pompeii | 40 – 30 BC

Below the garlands there are examples of Roman graffiti and I’m posting three photographs showing just a small part of the graffiti. The scratched (getting back to the meaning of the word graffiti) drawings are of animals, hunted animals. Because the graffiti is low down on the wall, there has been thought that they were done by children, but a seated adult seems just as reasonable. When the graffiti was made is unknown, but it would have been before the earthquake of 62 AD.

Graffiti of a Deer and Horse | Detail of Detached Fresco from House of the Cryptoporticus | Pompeii | Before 62 AD

Graffiti of an Oryx | Detail of Detached Fresco | House of Cryptoporticus | Before 62 AD | Pompeii

Graffiti of a Boar | Detail from Detached Fresco | House of the Cryptoporticus | Pompeii | Before 62 AD

Titian | Detail of Back of Ancona Altarpiece | Black Chalk on Wood Panel | 1520 | Pinacoteca | Ancona

Titian | Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Alvise with the Donor Alvise Gozzi | Oil on Panel | 320 x 206 cm. | 1520 | Pinacoteca | Ancona

Titian | Back of Ancona Altarpiece | Black Chalk on Wood Panel | 1520 | Pinacoteca | Ancona

Titian | Detail of Back of Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Alvise and the Donor Alvise Gozzi | Black Chalk on Panel | 1520 | Pinacoteca | Ancona

Titian | Detail of Back of Ancona Altarpiece | Black Chalk on Wood Panel | 1520 | Pinacoteca | Ancona

Titian | Detail of Back of Ancona Altarpiece | Black Chalk on Wood Panel | 1520 | Pinacoteca | Ancona

Titian | Detail of Back of Ancona Altarpiece | Black Chalk on Wood Panel | 1520 | Pinacoteca | Ancona

The most worked up head is probably a study for the Christ Child, and not one of the flying putti, because of the hint of halo. Its direction differs from both Christ’s and the putti heads. The other heads, usually in profile, are more doodle caricatures. Harold Wethey thought that the Christ Child’s head and the head of a woman should be considered autograph and the others school. Bert Meijer, with slight reservation, thought the drawings all by Titian. This seems more sensible. Great masters shouldn’t be precluded from the great fun of doodling.

References –

Giovanni Urbani, “Schede di restauro,” Bollettino dell’Istituto Centrale di Restauro, Nos. 9 – 10, 1952, pp. 61 -79.

Bert W. Meijer, “Titian Sketches on Panel and Canvas,” Master Drawings, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Autumn 1981), pp. 276 – 353.

Harold E. Wethey, “Titian’s Drawing of a Christ Child in Ancona,” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 124, No. 950 (May, 1982), pp. 294 – 290.

Two amazing 15th century drawings are Jan Van Eyck’s St. Barbara (Royal Museum, Antwerp) and Giovanni Bellini’s Lamentation (Uffizi, Florence). Both are on gesso covered panels and painted with fine, fine brushes. The Bellini is a large work and measures 74 x 118 cm., and the Van Eyck small at 31 x 18 cm.  They are often referred to as grisaille paintings. To me they are much more drawings than paintings, and if I were a drawings curator at the Uffizi or in Antwerp, I’d surely agitate to have them in my department. The limiting of drawings to paper or animal skin supports seems too arbitrary.

Jan Van Eyck | St. Barbara | 1437 | Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten | Antwerp

Giovanni Bellini | Lamentation | Tempera on Panel | 74 x 118 cm. | c. 1490 | Galleria degli Uffizi | Florence

Bellini | Lamentation | Detail

Scholars are undecided as to whether these are finished or unfinished works. To modern eyes, it would seem insane to do such detailed works, only to be covered with paint. (The colored paint in the sky of the Van Eyck work was added later, not by Van Eyck.) Fifteenth century painters were meticulous in their preparation, but to this extent?

The possibilities:

– Unfinished, meant to be completed with paint

– Meant to be exactly as they are

– Meant to be used as teaching/workshop models

Or, maybe we’re dealing with instances of “quit while you’re ahead.”

Flax Plant (Linum Usitatissimum), Univ. della Tuscia Botanical Garden, Viterbo

The flax plant, or linum usitatissimum, is a key plant for the fine arts: linen rags to produce paper, linen canvas for paintings, and linseed oil as a medium for oil paints.

Flax was one of the first plants to be cultivated and easily adapts to different climates. (Archaeologists have recently found dyed wild flax fibers in Georgia that are about 34,000 years old. Here is NYT link.) Russia is now the largest producer of flax. Other countries with favorable cool climates where flax grows well are Belgium (known for the finest linen and artists’ canvas), France, the Netherlands, and Ireland. But, Egypt and Italy also produce linen and have for thousands of years. Turin’s Egyptian Museum has many beautifully preserved lengths of linen as well as the linen wraps of mummies.

Ancient Linen at Torino's Museo Egizio

The longest Etruscan text, the Liber Linteus Zagrabensis, is also the only example of an ancient linen codex. It dates to 250 BC and although Etruscan has not been deciphered, it seems the book is a liturgical calendar.  It’s thought that it was made near Chiusi, in Etruria, and from there somehow traveled to Egypt. It survived as mummy wrappings and has been reconstructed to its original form, an accordion folded codex. Both the codex and the mummy are in Zagreb’s archaeological museum.

Linen, the textile, as well as the paper made from linen rags, is exceptionally strong, very supple, and folds remarkably well. Although supple, it retains its shape, being inelastic. It has the ability to absorb water and still feel dry.   These characteristics, at least partly, explain why centuries old drawings can be so well preserved.

US banknotes are made from linen and cotton rags. Their lifespan, about 20 abuse-filled months (it’s estimated that a dollar bill can be folded 4,000 times before tearing), is a good deal longer than that of other currencies. Linen becomes stronger in water than when dry, and bills accidentally left in pockets launder perfectly.

Flax grows thigh high and has pretty blue to almost white flowers with five petals.  The plant reaches maturity in about 100 days. In Italy, it is planted in the early spring and harvested in June. In colder climates, it’s planted later. Egypt’s warmer climate would make flax a winter crop.

Flax in Flower (Linum Usitatissimum) at the Univ. della Tuscia's Botanical Garden, Viterbo

Once mature, the whole plant, with the roots, is lifted from the ground. The process in readying the fiber for weaving is very involved and it is hard to imagine that for millennia nearly all families grew flax, retted it, scutched it, spun it, wove it, and then created garments. By the Middle Ages, Viterbo, a city in Northern Lazio, had a thriving flax industry.  The area’s thermal springs originally attracted the Etruscans, and the Romans built elaborate baths there. Bullicame, the name of the springs and shallow pools closest to the city, those where prostitutes bathed according to Dante, were also used to rett or macerate flax stems. Retting frees the fibers from the woody center of the stem. The heat of the water accelerated the retting process.

Bullicame's 55°C Water Was Used to Rett Flax

Where water is unavailable, flax is allowed to rett in the field, the dew and rain act to release the fibers, just more slowly. After this the flax is allowed to dry and then it is scutched, or beaten. In the process the precious flax strands are separated from the tow, the shorter fibers.  I realized how right the terms “tow-headed” and “flaxen-haired”  were when I saw this photograph of Egyptian flax in the ad of an Egyptian online flax merchant.

Advanced Group Ad for Egyptian Flax

Some Known and Some Approximate Dates:

One of my favorite passages in Eric Hebborn’s memoir “Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger” is where he fills a hole in one of his faked drawings by chewing on a piece of paper, breaking up the fiber, and then pushes the pulp into the hole and flattens it. This is paper making at its simplest.

Fiber, water, and netting to catch the fiber are the three essentials of paper. Wool felt to absorb water, a flattening press, and gelatinous glue to size the paper are important refinements.

At Fabriano, in the region of the Marche, paper has been produced since at least the 13th century, and there is a wonderful museum called the “Museo della Carta e della Filigrana” or Paper and Watermark Museum. It is operated by the City of Fabriano and Cartiere Miliani, Fabriano’s huge mill which produces a range of papers, from high quality art papers to photocopy paper, and also is one of the five European mills that produces paper for the euro. The earliest piece of paper at the museum is a 1293 paper with a watermark of the Arabic figure 8, written horizontally.

1293 Paper Fragment, Horizontal Figure 8, Fabriano City Archive, on loan to Paper Museum

The earliest European paper was made from rags, rags made from linen or hemp cloth. Linen is an ideal fiber since it is at its strongest when wet. Cotton was not used until the 18th century, when machines capable of processing cotton were introduced and supplies of cotton from warmer countries, including America, became more plentiful. (Cotton had been grown in Sicily, as was papyrus, but Sicily’s temperatures were not reliably warm.) Paper from trees was introduced in 1870. The availability of plant materials and rags has driven the history of paper. From the didactic film shown at the museum, we know that when the plague was raging, there would be shortages of rags and paper, because the clothes and bedclothes of the sick and dead would be burned, rather than sold.

The museum has exhibits, machines, and master paper makers demonstrating the making of paper. Rags were carefully sorted, washed, bleached, and then cut into small pieces. There are large wooden machines, once powered by water action, but now electrically, that pound the rag bits into pulp.

18th cent. Paper Making Machine, Fabriano, Photo by Lucas Miller

The most fascinating part of the visit comes from seeing the master paper maker scoop up the pulpy broth and with expert movements control and catch just the right amount of fiber for a sheet of paper. The tour guide said that it takes about six years for a person to learn this skill. The mold is a frame with chain wires and laid wires and it is never very large, never longer than a man’s arm, since that would make it very difficult to maneuver. (When artists needed large paper, as for preparatory cartoons, they would fasten pieces of paper together with glue.) Over time chain and laid wires and also watermark wires bend and degrade. This movement of the wires makes it difficult to study watermarks. Here is an early piece of paper at the Fabriano museum showing how wires can move.

1311 CRESSCE M Paper, Fabriano City Archive, on loan to Museum, Photo by Lucas Miller

After being molded, the paper is allowed to dry between wool felt slabs and then there are places for it to be hung to dry. Sometimes the sheets would be left in the fields to dry. It would then be sized by dipping the paper into a glue made from animal skins and allowed to dry again. The paper would then be pressed and finally burnished before it was sold.

Lascaux Cave, Det. Hall of the Bulls, France, c. 16,000 BC

Lascaux’s Caves with their earth colored images of cattle and stags;  white-ground lekythoi with their spare and elegant mourning figures; the bronze mirrors of all over the ancient world, incised with contour or outline drawings are all beautiful examples of drawing, but not what we now commonly think of as drawings.  When we think of drawings, we usually think of works on paper.

Inscription Painter. Attic 470-460 BC. Madrid Archeological Museum Inv. 19497. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen

The history of drawing and writing are closely linked. The very earliest writing is image based, drawn images give way to symbols and symbols to letters. The materials used in writing and in drawing are also mostly the same. Papyrus, parchment, paper, pen, brush, ink, paint are shared by writing and drawing.

The word paper comes from the word papyrus. Papyrus plants are aquatic and were cultivated along the Nile for their use as a support for writing (scrolls and later codices), as well as for building materials, sailcloth, fuel etc. The plant’s stem is made up of fibrous white interior which is easily cut into strips. Strips are fastened together by overlapping and pounding the damp pieces of papyrus to form sheets and then long scrolls.  The more expensively produced scrolls would have had the papyrus buffed to a smooth finish, would have had carved wood and bone rollers, might have been illustrated, and maybe housed in protective boxes. Reading a scroll must be very much like scrolling on a computer. A couple of differences are that with scrolls one reads sideways, rather than longitudinally,  and no “find” command. The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, named because of the large library of papyrus scrolls found there, contained some 1,785 scrolls and is the only ancient library to remain intact (Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 AD insured that the scrolls were preserved, though carbonized). The Villa dei Papiri belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus,  Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. The ancient world’s largest library was at Alexandria and had some 700,000 papyri.