The anonymous Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium (‘Book of Various Arts’) contains the most complete set of instructions in the craft of medieval painting to have survived to the present day. Its comprehensive summary of the state of the art of painting in the workshops of the fourteenth century will be of great interest to art historians, conservators and historians of artists’ technology.
This long-overlooked manuscript provides a complete practical painting course: drawing, water-based tempera, oil and fresco. It includes painting on manuscripts, panels, sculptures and walls, but also painting on glass and ceramics. Instructions are given for the preparation of materials such as pigments and media, and also for their application and modelling, as well as for gilding and other useful techniques.
The range of knowledge displayed is remarkable with nearly six hundred recipes, two-thirds of which are unique to this manuscript. Furthermore it demonstrates that when the van Eycks and their contemporaries transformed painting in the fifteenth century, they did so using materials and techniques of oil painting that already existed.
This volume contains the first ever published translation of the Liber diversarum arcium together with an extensive technical and historical commentary.
List of illustrations
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Health and Safety: warning and disclaimer
Introduction
The content of the Liber diversarum arcium: a systematic course in painting
Discovery and reception of the Liber diversarum arcium
The importance of the Liber diversarum arcium for technical art history
Table of contents of the Liber diversarum arcium
The organisation of this book
The formation of the Liber diversarum arcium
The Liber diversarum arcium in relation to other art-technological texts
An introduction to mediaeval recipes for painters and illuminators
Textual parallels between the Liber diversarum arcium and other 'recipe books'
The composing of the Liber diversarum arcium
Composing the Liber diversarum arcium
Separable textual elements within the Liber diversarum arcium
Reworking in the Liber diversarum arcium
Reworking and use: conclusions
The composer of the Liber diversarum arcium
Place of composition of the Liber diversarum arcium
Date of composition of the Liber diversarum arcium
Conclusions: date and place of composition of the Liber diversarum arcium
The writing of Montpellier MS H 277
Manuscript versus text
The codicology of MS H 277: overview
The state of the Liber diversarum arcium text: textual corruption in MS H 277
Codicological conclusions
The Liber diversarum arcium and the state of the art of painting c.1200–1400
The general principles of mediaeval painting technology and technique
Beyond Theophilus: the Liber diversarum arcium and pre-Eyckian oil painting
Conclusions: peculiarities and purpose
MS H 277 and the Liber diversarum arcium: manuscript and text
Why the Liber diversarum arcium was composed
The value of the Liber diversarum arcium
Reliability and usefulness: texts as practical tools
Conclusions
Translation
Aims and principles of the Translation
English–Latin glossary
Translation
Commentary and discussion
The Liber diversarum arcium and the craft of fourteenth-century painting
Latin–English glossary
Edition: Latin text
Aims and principles of the Edition
An editing theory for mediaeval recipe texts
Abbreviations
Manuscripts
Hands
Dictionaries
Latin text
Appendices
Codicology and context within MS H 277
Edition of Compendium artis picturae f. 26v
Text of De coloribus et mixtionibus
Zagan’s reworkings of Theophilus II.23
Subsequent history of MS H 277
Guillaume Libri
Concordance of Theophilus chapter numbers in different editions
Other mediaeval technical recipe manuscripts in Montpellier
Modern references to the Liber diversarum arcium
Bibliography
Manuscripts cited
Printed works
Reviews
...la publicación del Mediaeval Painters' Materials and Techniques: The Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium de Mark Clarke explora al máximo los posibles enfoques (históricos, artísticos, técnicos, estéticos, lingüísticos) de un tratado de tecnología artística y estoy seguro que pronto se convertirá en una referencia obligatoria a la hora de tratar estos textos como una fuente para la historia del arte y disciplinas afines.
Revista de História da Arte W(1) (2011) 267-269
Il s’agit, à n’en plus douter, d’un témoin précieux dans l’histoire de la peinture à l’huile et d’un guide incontournable pour l’étude des techniques artistiques anciennes.
Bulletin Codicologique 2 (2011) 151-152