Note 221 — Chapter IX · (XXIII.)

On panels and canvases as used at Venice Vasari has an interesting note at the beginning of his Life of Jacopo Bellini (Opere, III, 152). This was a subject that would at once appeal to his practical mind when he visited the city. He notices incidentally that the usual woods for panels were ‘oppio’ acer campestris, maple; or ‘gattice,’ the populus alba of Horace, but that the Venetians used only fir from the Alps. (Cennini, c. 113, recommends poplar or lime or willow. Pliny, Hist. Nat., XVI, 187, speaks of larch and box, and Ilg says that northern painters generally used oak.) The Venetian preference for canvas, Vasari says, was due to the facts that it did not split nor harbour worms, was portable, and could be obtained of the size desired; this last he notes too in our text. Berger (Beiträge, IV, 29), gives the meaning of ‘Grossartigkeit’ to the word ‘grandezza’ used above by Vasari, but of course it only means material size, not ‘grandeur’ in an aesthetic sense.