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CVI.  Directions for painting in oil on a wall.  Method 1.
    You must when the wall is perfectly dry, give it two or three coats of boiling oil, or more, if necessary, so that the face of the wall may remain greasy, and can soak in no more; then lay another coat of ficcative colors, which is done as follows.  Grind some common whitening, or chalk, red ochre, and other sorts of earth, pretty stiff, and lay a coat of it on the wall.  When this is very dry, then draw and paint on it whatever you will, observing to mix a little varnish among your colors, that you may not be obliged to varnish them afterwards.

CVII.  Method 2.
    In order it may sooner dry, and that the dampness should not occasion the color to scale, as it sometimes happens, on account of the oil which resists if, make a cement with lime and marble dust, or tiles; this lay on the wall with a trowel, smoothen it, and then give it a coat of linseed oil, with a large brush.  In the next place, prepare a composition of Greek pitch, mastich, and coarse varnish, which boil altogether in a pipkin, and lay afterwards, first with a brush, then smoothen with a hot trowel, in order to spread it more equally.  When this is done, lay on a coat of fixative colors above mentioned, then draw their design and paint.

CVIII.  Method 3.
    Others again make a cement, or mortar, with lime, brickdust and sand.  And when this is dry, make another with lime, sifted brick dust and smith's embers, or iron scum, all in equal quantities.  Beat and incorporate together, with whites of eggs and linseed oil, and it will make so strong a cement as cannot be equaled by any thing.  Its nature is such, that while you are laying it on, you must not stop and leave it till you have finished, otherwise it will assuredly crack in every one of those places where you resumed your work.  Therefore go on, till the whole wall is entirely covered with it, and totally polished.  And when dry, lay the above mentioned coat of fixative colors, and proceed according to the other directions.

CIX.  Directions for painting in oil on wood.
    Lay first one coat of size on the wood; then another of whitening diluted with size, then another again of boiling oil.  When this last is thoroughly dry, you draw your design and paint as usual.

CX.  Directions for painting in oil on canvas.
    1.  Choose a fine and smooth tick or cloth, which nail on a frame.  Pass over it first a coat of size, and when dry, rub it over with a pounce stone to eat off all the knobs and knots.  The size which you put first on the cloth is intended to lay down all the threads, and fill up all the small holes, that the color may not pass through.
    2.  When the cloth is dry, lay on a coat of simple colour, which may not destroy the others; for example, brown red, which is a natural earth, full of substance and lasting.  You may mix it , if you like, with a little white lead, it will dry the sooner.  To grind this colour, they use nut or linseed oil, and in order to lay it as thin as it is possible, they use a large knife made on purpose.
    3.  When this colour is dry, you are to rub it again with the pounce stone, to render it smoother.  Then lay another coat of white lead and charcoal black, to render the ground greyish.  In this as well as the preceding coats, you must take care to put as little colour as you possibly can, to prevent the cloth from cracking, and for the better preservation of the colors which are to be laid afterwards in painting.  For it is proper to observe, that could there be no ground at all laid on the canvas of a picture, previous to the painting of it, and should one paint directly on the bare cloth without any other preparation, the colors would appear much more to their advantage, and preserve their brightness much longer.  A proof of this assertion may be may be found in the practice of Paul Veronese and Titan, who used to impregnate their canvas with water colors only, and paint afterwards in oil over that ground.-- This custom has not a little contributed to render their pieces more lively and bright, because the ground in water colors draws and soaks the oil off the colors, which must render them much finer, as the greatest cause of their dullness arises only from the oil, with which they are diluted.
    4.  They, therefore, who wish to see their works keep bright and lively, use as little oil as possible, and keep their colors more stiff, mixing a little oil of spike amongst them, which indeed vaporizes very soon, but assists in rendering them more fluid and tractable in working.
    5.  Another cause of the colors not keeping a long while their beauty is, when they are too much tormented on the pallet, as it often happens that painters confuse them in working.  Whenever this is the case, they must needs be hurt, as there are many which adulterate and otherwise corrupt the others, and spoil the vivacity of their tint.  We cannot recommend too much to be cautious and clean in employing them, each by themselves, on the pallet, without mixing them too much with the brush or pencil.  Never mingle together those colors which are enemies to each other, as all the blacks are, particularly the lampblack; but as much as possible try to use them separately.  When there is occasion of giving more strength to some parts of a picture, stay till it is dry before you touch it up again, if those colors are obnoxious to the others with which you are to do it.  There he shows his judgment in painting, who is not precipitate in laying his colors on his pictures, but lays them thick enough, and covers at several times the carnations, which in terms of art is called empater.
    6.  As to what concerns the first laying of grounds on canvas, in water colors, it is a method not commonly practiced because they may scale, and cannot be rolled without some difficulty.  For this reason, the custom prevails of grounding the canvas with oil colors.  But when the canvas is good and very fine, the less colour you can lay on for that purpose the better.  Take care only those colors and oils are good.  The lead which some painters use to help their colors to dry the sooner, soon destroys their brightness and beauty.

CXI.  Which colors are used for the above purpose.
    1.  Though all the different sorts of colors which are used in painting in oil are not fit for that called fresco yet it is true, that (except lime and marble dust, which cannot strictly be called colors,) every one of those used on fresco are good in oil.
    2.  White lead is made with lead which you bury.  Several years after, this lead turns into some sorts of flakes, which are of a very fine white.  Though this white exists in painting, and id in positive use, it has, however, a very bad quality, which the oil corrects a little when you grind it on the stone.
    3.  Ceruse, or flake white, is a sort of rust gathered from lead, but of a coarser nature than the other.
    4.  Massicot; there are two sorts of this colour.  The one is yellow, and the other is white.  It is made with calcined lead.
    5.  Orpine, otherwise auripigment.  Is used calcined and non-calcined.  To calcine it, they put it in a iron box, or in a pot well stopped.  But few either calcine it, or even use it at all, as the fumes are mortal, and it is very dangerous to use at all.
    6.  Black lead comes from lead mines.  They make very little use of it, because it is a bad colour of itself, besides that, it is a great enemy to the others.
    7.  Cinnabar, or vermilion, is drawn from the mines where they gather quick-silver.  As it is a mineral, it is the reason why it does not resist the impression of the air, nor the injuries of the weather.
    8.  Lake. This colour, which is an artificial made one, is composed with cochineal or with scarlet flocks; or again, Brasil wood, and some other sorts of woods.  There are several sorts of lake made. It does not stand the weather.
    9.  Blue verditure and green verditure is very seldom used in any other works but landscapes.
    10.  Indigo.  This colour is generally used for making skies, or draperies; when properly used, it keeps its beauty a great while.  You must not mix it with too great a quantity of oil, but lay it a little thick and dark, because it discharges very much.  They use it with great success, diluted with gum water.  It is a good colour for the composition of greens.
    11.  Brown pink, otherwise called stil-de-grain.  This colour is drawn from what is called French berries, which they soak and boil, then mix the result with vine-wood ashes, or calcined white chalk, to give it a proper consistence.  when this is done, it must be strained through a very fine cloth.
    12.  Lampblack.  This is a bad colour, but handy to paint black draperies.
    13.  Ivory black.  This black is made indifferently with common bones, as well as ivory burnt.  Appelles discovered this sort of black, if we believe Pliny, book xxxv. chap. 5.
    14.  Verdigrease is the most pernicious of all the colors and capable to ruin a whole picture, if there were never so little in colour with which the canvas is first impregnated.-- It is however of a very agreeable look.  They sometimes calcine it to prevent its malignant effect; but it is as dangerous to use it that way as orpine; and it is an undoubted truth that, however well prepared it may be, it must be employed by itself, for it would spoil all the colors with which it may be mixed.  It dries very much, and for that purpose they mix a little of it with the blacks, which can never dry without some assistance.
    N. B.  Your must be very careful never to use, for other colors, the pencils with which you shall have laid any verdigrease.
    15.  There are again some other sorts of compound colors which are never used but in oil.

CXII.  Which oils are used in painting.
    1.  The best oils which are used in painting are those of nut and linseed.  To render the colors more fluid, and spread more easily under the pencil, they use also oil of spike.  This oil absorbs itself in the canvas, and leaves the colors without any gloss.  It is made with the flowers of a plant called spikenard, or lavender spike.
    2.  There is another oil drawn from Melezian rosin, firs, etc. wherefore it is called oil of turpentine.  This oil is very good for touching up pictures; but it is chiefly good for mixing with ultramarine, and the different sorts of smalts, because it serves to make them spread with more facility, and evaporates almost immediately.  When you make use of this oil, the less there is of any other oil in the colour the better, as they all serve only to make it turn yellow.
    3.  There are other oils again which are denominated fixative oils, because they serve to dry up the other the sooner.  These are many in number and species.  One sort is nothing but the oil of nut, boiled with gold litharge and a whole onion peeled, which is taken off after boiling; this onion serving only to exsiccate the greasy parts of the oil, and to clarify it.  Another sort is made with azure in powder, or smalt, boiled in oil of nut.  When the whole has boiled, you must let it settle and then skim off the top.  It is fittest for diluting the white, and such of the other colors as you want to preserve purest and neatest.

CXIII.  To take off instantly a copy from a print, or a picture.
    Make a water of soap and alum, with which wet a cloth or a paper; lay either on a print or picture, and pass it once under the rolling press; then going round the other side to take it up, you will have a very fine copy of whatever you shall have laid it upon.

CXIV.  Directions for making the Spanish carnation.
    Take bastard saffron, wash, dry, and grind it well.  While you grind it, put in four ounces of pearl ashes to every one pound of saffron.  Incorporate them well both together, and throw it into a double cloth jelly bag.  Then set half a pint of Spanish lemon juice on the fire, and when just lukewarm, pour it on the saffron in the bag, and lay under it what you want to dye.  The stuff which is to be dyed ought previously to have been boiled in alum water, then rinsed and wiped between two cloths, as a preparatory process to make it take the dye better.

CXV.  To make the Spanish ladies rouge.
    Vermilion, carefully laid on a sheet of paper, from which, by means of wetting the tip of your finger with your spittle, then take it off at will, and rub your cheeks, lips, etc.  The method of making it is as follows.
    1.  Take good scarlet flocks and spirit of wine, or in their stead, lemon juice.  Boil the whole in an earthen pot, well glazed and well stopped, till the spirit of wine, or lemon juice, has charged itself with all the colour of the scarlet flocks.-- Strain this dye through a cloth, and wring it hard, to express well all the colour out.  Boil it afterwards with a little arabic water, till the colour becomes very deep.
    2.  On half a pound of scarlet flocks you must put four ounces of spirit of wine, and a sufficient quantity of water, to soak well the flocks.  Then in the colour you extract from it, put the bulk of a filbert of gum arabic, and boil the whole in a silver porringer.  When this is ready, as we said before, proceed as follows.
    3.  Steep some cotton in the colour, and wet some sheets of paper with it; then let them dry in the shade.  Repeat this wetting, drying of the same sheets over again, many times, till you find they are charged with rouge to your satisfaction.

CXVI.  A fine lake, made with shell-lac.
    1.  Boil and skim well, sixteen pounds of chamber-lye; then put i one pound of fine shell-lac, with five ounces of roch alum, in powder.  Boil all together, till you see the chamber-lye is well charged with the colour, which you may easily know by steeping a bit of white rag in it; then take it out again, to see whether or not the colour please you; and if it do not, let it boil longer, repeating the same trial, till you are perfectly satisfied.
    2.  Throw now the liquor in a flannel bag, and without suffering what runs into the pan under to settle, re-pour it into the bas so many times, till the liquor runs at last quite clear and not tinged.  Then with a wooden spatula, take off the lake, which is in form of curd, form it into small cakes, or balls, and dry them in a shade on new tiles; then keep them for use.

CXVII.  Directions to make cinnabar, or vermilion.
    1.  Put mercury (or quicksilver) in a glazed dish.  Set it on a sand bath, and let it be well surrounded with the sand every way.  Pour some melted brimstone over it, and with an iron spatula keep constantly stirring, till the whole is converted into a black powder.
    2.  With this powder, fill the quarter part of a retort with a short and wide neck.  Place it first on a fire of cinders.  Increase the fire by degrees, and continue it for ten hours; after which, make a blasting one for twelve hours.
    3.  Observations.-- By the first fire, there will arise a black fume.-- By the second, a yellow.-- And by the last, a red; which signifies the perfect accomplishment of the cinnabar.-- As soon as this is the case, let the vessel cool, and you will find in the receiver, and in the neck of the retort, and very fine cinnabar.
    N. B.  Many, instead of a glass retort, use earthen, or stone which all equally bear the fire.  Make a slow fire, for about half an hour, then increase it till the red fumes arise.  Both methods answer the same purpose.

CXVIII.  Another method of making cinnabar.
    1.  Melt brimstone in a pipkin over a slow fire, then take it out, and with one hand squeeze a know of mercury between your fingers through a cloth into the melted sulphur; and with the other, stir well till the lump is become quite cold and black.
    2.  Put this into a subtile powder, with which having filled the fourth part of a very long retort, lute it well, and very exactly, with a good lute.  Place it next, without a receiver, for two or three hours, on a very mild fire; then introduce into the retort a long funnel, which will reach to the bottom of the retort, through that funnel pass a long spatula, which touching also the bottom of the retort, should come out of the funnel five or six inches.  In the middle of the spatula let there be a bung of lute round it, well dried, which will stop so well the retort as to prevent it from breathing any air.  When all this is done, push on the fire to a pretty smart degree, and keep it for five hours.
    3.  At the end of this term, draw out the spatula, and introduce, through the same way that it came out, two spoonfuls, or thereabouts, of your prepared powder of brimstone and quicksilver, with which you intend to make cinnabar, which for that purpose. have kept warm in a vessel by the corner of the fire, that it may not cool the retort in going in, and thereby retard the operation.
    4.  Continue so to do, adding every hour new matter, by means of the drawing out the spatula to introduce the new powder, and replacing it quickly, till you have increased you lump of cinnabar to the quantity of one hundred weight.  The spatula's use in the neck of the retort is to prevent its filing itself up by the sublimation of the matter, which would occasion two evils, that of breading of the retort, and of preventing the introduction of new powder to increase the lump of cinnabar.  So that at the same time it keeps a free passage into the retort, it nevertheless stops it too, by means of the ball of lute which is round it.  But in the last place, in order there should remain no vacancy in the middle of the cinnabar-lump, take off the spatula for the last time, and inject frosh powder; then without reintroducing the spatula, stop the retort with a lump of lute only.  Thus the longer you keep the fire up, the harder and redder the lump of cinnabar becomes.
    5.  Observations.-- This cinnabar is the very same which empirics use in fumigation, along with aloes wood, myrrh, and other aromatics, to excite the mouth, or belly flux, which they reiterate two or three times, or till that flux is abundant enough to procure the cure of the veneral disorder.  It is the same also which painter make use of, and which enters into the composition of sealing-wax.

CXIX.  An azure as fine as, and which looks similar to, ultramarine.
    Grind well together into powder three ounces of ammoniac salt, and six of verdigrease.  Then we it in continuing to grind it with oil of tartar, till you have made it pretty fluid.  Put this into a glass matrass, and bury it five days in hot dung.-- At the end of that term you will find your composition turned into a fine azure.

CXX.  The same, as practiced in Germany.
    1.  Distil in an alembic, one pound of vitriol, half a pound of nitre, and three ounces of cinnabar.  In this water pit tinsel or copper; they will dissolve.  When the dissolution shall be perfected, add a sufficient quantity of calcined pewter to render your liquid quite milk white.  Let the whole rest for three days, and then you will have a middling azure.
    2.  The liquor which stills from the vitriol, cinnabar and nitre, has the power to dissolve any sort of metal whatever.  It has again this additional virtue, that if you rub the forehead of a horse with it, the hair will instantly turn, and remain white at that place.