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SHORTER NOTICES
With the knowledge that ceder-green is chrysocolla, the mean- works; both the pigment and the colour name became obsolete
ing of the name is clear, as the word chrysocolla is derived from at the same time. In this case, evidence is still required to deter-
Greek and means, literally, an adhesive for gold. Both malachite mine the exact meaning of the name.
and the mineral still known as chrysocolla are reputed to have Correct identification of colour names is important not only
been used as a cold solder for gold during the medieval period. in supplementing work done in the scientific examination of
The OxfordEnglishDictionarycontains numerous examples which paintings, but also in helping to make references to painting
show that solderwas often spelt without 1; thus it is probable that materials more easily understood. Research into the meaning of
is a corrupt form of solder-green
ceder-green and that its true meaning names is best rewarded by close examination of practical works,
was forgotten by the time chrysocolla became an obsolete pig- which were not necessarily written by eminent painters, but
ment in the mid-seventeenth century. information gained in that way may be usefully applied to works
Another colour name which has received scant attention is of a more general nature, such as Hilliard's treatise, and may also
general;again it is a name which may be found in sixteenth and help to explain brief referencesto colours in documents relating to
early seventeenth-century sources, but not in later works. Unlike other important painters.
ceder-green,the name generalis mentioned in the OxfordEnglish
Dictionarywhere it is described doubtfully as 'a ground colour' and
it is grouped with other words derived from the Latin genus.
However, general was undoubtedly a yellow pigment and that
fact points to the possibility that the colour name comes from
the same Indo-European root as many English and foreign
words connected with yellow or gold. A foreign word comparable Recent Museum Acquisitions
with generalis the Spanish genuli,which appears as the name of a
yellow pigment in the seventeenth-century works on painting by
Palomino and Pacheco. The English and Spanish names are
equally difficult to interpret and both became obsolete at the same ThreeByzantineCeramics
(WaltersArt
period.
Certain references to general suggest that it was associated with Gallery,Baltimore)
massicot, which has, since the eighteenth century anyway, been
identified as lead monoxide. In The Art of Drawing with the Pen BY RICHARD H. RANDALL, JR
(16o6) Henry Peacham refers to 'masticot or general' as if the
names are synonymous, yet both names are listed without such THREE Byzantine ceramics added to the Walters Art Gallery
an indication in several other sources, Bodleian MS. Ashmole collections this year have allowed a broadening of the collection
1494, B.M. MSS. Stowe 680, and Sloane 2092. A price list in in a direction hitherto quite difficult. Though many fragments of
V. & A. MS. 86.L.65 includes general at three shillings and Byzantine dishes were found at Corinth, Sparta, and Constan-
fourpence per pound whereas massicot is shown at exactly twice tinople many years ago, complete dishes have been rarely avail-
the price for the same quantity, therefore implying that the able. The new techniques of skin diving have brought to light a
pigments were not identical. Distinct names may have been number of shipwrecks in the Adriatic, Aegean, and Mediter-
applied to different degrees of lead monoxide, as that pigment ranean Seas in the past several years in which have been dis-
could vary in depth of colour according to the length of time it covered classical remains, sculpture, oil jars, and recently a
was heated. However, that would not account for a great differ- number of groups of Byzantine glazed ware.
ence in price between massicot and general, and it seems pos- The dishes usually recovered from the shipwrecks are of the
sible that one name refers to lead monoxide and the other to lead type most common in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and
stannate. Documentary evidence of instructions for making the generally described as early sgraffitoware. The body is red with a
latter, an oxide of lead and tin, was found in foreign language whitish slip and a thin glaze, through which the designs are
sources by Mrs Merrifield who undertook research into the history drawn. Two of the Walters Art Gallery pieces are flat dishes with
of painting materials in the nineteenth century, but the yellow a vestigial rim foot and a sharply upturned outer edge. The first
received no further attention until it was identified through the of these (Fig.61) is decorated with a hawk or kite grasping a
scientific examination of paintings during the present century, stylized branch within a decorative border. He is strongly and
and since then a yellow which correspondsto the colour identified broadly drawn, the lines of the figure appearing brown against
as lead stannate has been observed on paintings dating from the the off-white of the glaze. The second dish (Fig.59) shows a
fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century. leopard rampant amid sprigs of foliage. It is more delicately
Existence of a tin-yellow was not unknown in England in the drawn and the dish has patches of purple grey in the glaze from
seventeenth century, for a paper on artists' colours in Philosophi- the firing. Each is approximately 9- inches in diameter.
cal Transactions(1686) contains the statement that massicot is The third Walters example (Fig.6o) is a deep bowl with a rim
'an improper calx of tin'. The writer had taken the definition from foot. It is incised with a design probably derived from Persian
De Lithiasi, a treatise written by the physician, Van Helmont, pottery of a tree-of-life motif within a concentric design of a star,
during the first half of the seventeenth century. Certainly, a rosette, and a circle. The glaze is again off-white, but slightly
some writers remembered that a yellow pigment was at one greyish, and the rim of the bowl retains considerable evidence of
time made from tin, but they do not answer the question as sea life attached to it.
to which name was applied to the pigment when it was in The workshop that produced this particular group of pottery
current use. Because changes in the meaning of colour names have was probably on the mainland of Asia Minor, though no excava-
occurred so often in the past, one must accept the possibility that tions have identified specific kiln sites. While some thirteen pieces
massicot was once used for lead stannate and was later transferred of the find that I have examined reveal a repetition of animal and
to lead monoxide. However, it is significant that lead stannate has plant motifs, there is a continual liveliness in the drawing, whether
been observed in paintings which date from a period preceding the motifs are of Persian derivation or more purely Byzantine, as
the early seventeenth century and that the name generalis like- in the case of the animals. The present find was made in a wreck
wise to be found in sixteenth and very early seventeenth-century off the northern Dodecanese Islands at the south edge of the
461I
RECENT MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS
462
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cm. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.)
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60. Byzantine Dish, incised with design of a tree-of-life motif within a concen- 61. Byzantine Dish, decorated with hawk or kite. Mid-twelfth century
tric design of a star, rosette and circle. Mid-twelfth century A.D. Diameter, A.D. Diameter, c.23-5 cm. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.)
c.23'5 cm. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.)
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62. Bookbinding, attributed to Antoine-Michel Padeloup, on a book of 1723. 63. Bookbinding, by Master H. B., Breslau. Dated 1529. (Walters Art Gallery,
(Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.) Baltimore.)