> Oh! That makes sense! Recently I judged an SCA A&S contest and in the > "household" class was a lovely bookbinding display, including a > reprint of an article. In it it discusses that the majority of book > covers from the North are made from wood while most of those from > Italy are made from pasting layers of the first pages together- this > was from a single though large collection. I do wonder if it has > anything to do with bora and other wildlife that eats wood as the few > wooden book covers from Italy are full of such creatures. > > I did initially find the image on another site and it is also > available on AllPosters.com > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Uczta_monarsza.jpg >
I think most of the art historians think it has to do with climate. It's much easier to get air to the back of a canvas panel than it is to a wooden one, and warpage was a big issue. Climate was one of the major influences that encouraged oil painting to be "developed" in the North, made popular and then have it move South. I say "developed" because it was used earlier than the credited "discovery" of oil painting, of about 1410 by Hubert or John Van Eyck. Prior to this, the means to dry an oil painting involved sitting it in the sun. Which if it wasn't done right, could cause the paint to crackle, ruining a painting before it might even be finished. It's believed probably Hubert, the older brother did some experimenting with additives to the oil to get something that would dry in the shade and not be quite so temperamental. into the fifteen century there's comments by the Flemish artists that comment on those outrageous Italians that paint on canvas, and once the painting is dry to roll it and carry it about. Anyway, I did a survey of 16th century portraits recently and it did seem to follow that the Northern areas, England included did more panel paintings, and Italy, France and Spain were more canvas oriented. Oh, and if anyone cares, it didn't seem to matter if you were royalty or just in that upper class as to the size of the portrait painting, or proportions of the piece - though a ratio similar to the standard canvases available today was used. alex looking at paintings because they're paintings these days, rather than just for the costume content, but finding much of the accumulative library working with this new study as well as the old subjects. -- "I'm buying this fabric/book now in case I have an emergency...you know, having to suddenly make presents for everyone, sickness,flood, injury, mosquito infestations, not enough silk in the house, it's Friday..." ;) _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
