From Italy to France to Flanders, the arts of painting in the 14th
century were practiced in manuscript illumination, on panel, and in
fresco. Recipes for pigments appropriate to all these arts are included
in this collection. "Experiments upon Colours" were dictated by painters
to a Frenchman, Jehan Alcherius, while the Italian artist, Cennino
Cennini, was especially attentive to the practice and the pigments to be
used in fresco painting in The Book of Art / Il Libro dell' Arte, of
c. 1390. His descriptions reveal the craft of Giotto, whose works make
up the plates in this collection.