Читать книгу The Lost Diary of Leonardo’s Paint Mixer - Alex Parsons - Страница 11

Florence, January 1477

I will say this for my new master, Leonardo. He does know his paints. He knows how to grind up rocks and stones and mud to make his colours. He knows how to prepare a canvas, or a panel of wood, or a plaster wall. He knows how to cast bronze and to make armatures*. He knows his geometry and his chemistry. In fact there’s very little he doesn’t know.

And I’ll tell you something else about him. He starts a million jobs and FINISHES NONE OF THEM! I can see this may well drive me mad.

He’s very keen on oil paint at the moment. This is a method of mixing paints with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and nut oil so that pictures dry in the shade. Normally, you see, we put them out in the sun to dry, which can often make the wooden panels split.

Though I say it myself, I am very good at mixing paint. But it is not an easy job. For blue, I have to pound up lapis lazuli (it comes in lumps of precious blue stone). For red I squeeze roots of the madder plant and grind up the mineral vermilion. For yellow I use the urine of Indian cows fed on mango leaves, and I’ve heard some colourmen (that’s the official name for my profession) make a brown using ground-up Egyptian mummies. But not me.

Leonardo says my oil paint makes skin tones luminous and hair like silk, and gives him total control over light and shade, plus you don’t see the brush strokes. So I dash about like a mad thing, pounding rocks, mixing oils, burning charcoal, making glue and stirring varnish. And what’s he doing? Helping with all the mad activity that he’s started? No, he’s gazing into the middle distance looking for inspiration. Inspiration! What use is inspiration when the glue pot’s boiling over?