Mediaeval Painters’ Materials and Techniques

We present the first English translation of the Liber diversarum arcium, a 14th-century manuscript offering the most comprehensive surviving guide to medieval painting techniques. Covering tempera, oil, fresco, manuscript illumination, glass, and ceramics, it includes nearly 600 detailed recipes-many found nowhere else. Accompanied by extensive technical and historical commentary, this invaluable resource reveals the advanced state of painters’ knowledge prior to the innovations of the van Eycks, and will appeal to art historians, conservators, and scholars of medieval technology.

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

• By (author) Mark Clarke

"...la publicacion del Mediaeval Painters' Materials and Techniques: The Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium de Mark Clarke explora al maximo los posibles enfoques (historicos, artisticos, tecnicos, esteticos, linguisticos) de un tratado de tecnologia artistica y estoy seguro que pronto se convertira en una referencia obligatoria a la hora de tratar estos textos como una fuente para la historia del arte y disciplinas afines." Revista de Historia da Arte W(1) (2011) 267-269 "Il s'agit, An'en plus douter, d'un temoin precieux dans l'histoire de la peinture Al'huile et d'un guide incontournable pour l'etude des techniques artistiques anciennes." Bulletin Codicologique 2 (2011) 151-152
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...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.

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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.

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