gh they did not create the art, yet were the
first to enable it for its function; that having found it in servile
office and with dormant power--laid like the dead Adonis on his
lettuce-bed--they gave it vitality and dominion. And fortunate it is for
those who look for another such reanimation, that the method of the Van
Eycks was not altogether their own discovery. Had it been so, that
method might still have remained a subject of conjecture; but after
being put in possession of the principles commonly acknowledged before
their time, it is comparatively easy to trace the direction of their
inquiry and the nature of their improvements.

106. With respect to remote periods of antiquity, we believe that the
use of a hydrofuge oil-varnish for the protection of works in tempera,
the only fact insisted upon by Mr. Eastlake, is also the only one which
the labor of innumerable ingenious writers has established: nor up to
the beginning of the twelfth century is there proof of any practice of
painting except in tempera, encaustic (wax applied by the aid of heat),
and fresco. Subsequent to that period, notices of works executed in
solid color mixed with oil are frequent, but all that can be proved
respecting earlier times is a gradually increasing acquaintance with the
different kinds of oil and the modes of their adaptation to artistical
uses.

Several drying oils are mentioned by the writers of the first three
centuries of the Christian era--walnut by Pliny and Galen, walnut,
poppy, and castor-oil (afterwards used by the painters of the twelfth
century as a varnish) by Dioscorides--yet these notices occur only with
reference to medicinal or culinary purposes. But at length a drying oil
is mentioned in connection with works of art by Aetius, a medical writer
of the fifth century. His words are:--

* * *

"Walnut oil is prepared like that of almonds, either by pounding or
pressing the nuts, or by throwing them, after they have been bruised,
into boiling water. The (medicinal) uses are the same: but it has a use
besides these, being employed by gilders or encaustic painters; for it
dries, and preserves gildings and encaustic paintings for a long time."

"It is therefore clear," says Mr. Eastlake, "that an oil varnish,
composed either of inspissated nut oil, or of nut oil combined with a
dissolved resin, was employed on gilt surfaces and pictures, with a view
to preserve them, at least as early as the fifth