d man, so zealous for the honour
of his country, and whose every effort had been directed to make it
pre-eminent, would withhold from one of his fellow-countrymen the just
fame which he deserved by so valuable a work. Nor do I intend here to
reprove him, or to lessen his glory. I shall only say that he committed
a great error in not having examined the work of this old master: for
then, perhaps, he would not so easily have given the credit of those
things to strangers which certainly were known in his own beautiful
Tuscany, and in all Italy, as I shall hereafter study to prove." Yet he
does not hesitate after this to charge "this noble-minded man" with
fabricating "a romance or tale of the imagination." But he misquotes
Vasari. As Mrs Merrifield justly observes, "he takes only part of
Vasari's account into consideration, instead of stating the whole, and
reasoning on it as Lanzi has done. Vasari does not limit Van Eyck's
discovery to the simple fact, that he had discovered that linseed and
nut oils were more drying than any he had tried; but he adds, "these
then, _boiled with his other mixtures_, made the varnish, which he, as
well as all the other painters of the world, had so long desired." It is
very singular that this most important passage should have been entirely
omitted by the editor, (Tambroni.) It is in _these mixtures_ that the
secret consisted, not in using the oils; and we may certainly conclude
that the process of Van Eyck was very different from that of Theophilus
and Cennino, both of whom used linseed oil without the mixture of any
other substance. "It will be observed that lake even was used by Cennino
without any addition to increase its drying qualities. The only dryer he
mentions (as such) is verdigris, which he used for mordants only. The
difference in the texture of pictures painted in the Flemish (that is,
Van Eyck's manner) and those painted with oil alone, or with the modern
megilp, (oil and mastic varnish,) is so well known that it is scarcely
necessary to allude to it.

"Picture-cleaners are perfectly aware of this circumstance, having been
instructed by observing the manner in which different solvents act upon
such pictures, (spirit-of-wine, for instance, will dissolve old
pictures, but it has no effect on pictures painted with oil only.--See
_Lanzi._) Vasari gives no clue by which we can discover of what those
_mixtures_ consisted; but we know that what Vasari calls _vernice
liquida_ did not