Abstract
THE studio of the medieval artist or craftsman was very much more than a place where pictures were painted or pots were fashioned. It combined the functions of workshop and laboratory for the master's own activities, and for the instruction of his pupils. A long apprenticeship was demanded of those whose ambition it was to become master craftsmen, and much of this period seems to have been devoted to an intense and intimate study of materials, which included the preparation of pigments, and the application of sundry metallurgical principles such as those of metal refining and extraction. In a word, this was a hard school of training in the properties of matter, somewhat far removed apparently from Ruskin's vision of Giorgione as he appears in “The Two Boyhoods”.
The Scientific Aspects of Artists' and Decorators' Materials
By Dr. R. S. Morrell. Pp. xi + 142. (London: Oxford University Press, 1939.) 5s. net.
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RAWLINS, F. The Scientific Aspects of Artists' and Decorators' Materials. Nature 144, 175–176 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144175a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144175a0