The Craftsman's Handbook by C.D. Cennini (1954, Paperback)

Art, genuine art, is a pleasure in the thrill of color and line and even in its process and materials. In fifteenth-century Florence, an artist named Cennino d'Andrea Cennini compiled a handbook for contemporary and future painters to consult. He created a cookbook for every step in drawing and painting from the beginning -- choosing ingredients, mixing paints, and preparing paper or cloth to paint on.

Unlike making sausage, creating art involves elements of delight. Some how-to's excerpted from this wonderful little book (translated by Daniel V. Thompson, Jr., 1933, reprinted many times by Dover), still vibrant five hundred years after it was composed, reveal something of everyday life in Cennino’s time, where the art came from.

To paint on a panel: start with a little boxwood panel nine inches square, washed with clear water and rubbed and smoothed down. "And when this little panel is thoroughly dry, take enough bone, ground diligently for two hours, to serve . . . take less than half a bean of this bone, or even less. And stir this bone up with saliva. Spread it all over the little panel with your fingers; and, before it gets dry, hold the little panel in your left hand, and tap over the panel with the finger tip of your right hand [presumably Cennino was right-handed] until you see that it is quite dry. And it will get coated with bone as evenly in one place as in another."

To find the bone: "You must know what bone is good. Take bone from the second joints and wings of fowls, or of a capon; and the older they are the better. Just as you find them under the dining-table, put them into the fire; and when you see that they have turned whiter than ashes, draw them out, and grind them well on the porphyry."

Parchment comes from sheep or goats. To draw on sheep parchment, the artist lightly inscribes the background of bone with a sharp point. "On the parchment you may draw or sketch with this [stylus] of yours if you first put some of that bone . . . all over the parchment . . . dusting it off with a hare's foot." To add ink, "shade the folds with washes of ink; that is, as much water as a nutshell would hold, with two drops of ink in it; and shade with a brush made of minever tails . . ."

"And if you ever make a slip, so that you want to remove some stroke made by this little lead, take a bit of the crumb of some bread, and rub it over the paper, and you will remove whatever you wish."

Cennino gives equally clear, detailed instructions for whittling goose quills to get a sharp point for ink drawing, for tempering paper with several coats of glue (tempera), for making clear tracing paper by scraping kidskin and treating it with linseed oil. White lead is a basic ingredient, so is saliva. (Saliva combined with lead poses a health hazard; painters often died young.) Colors come mostly from minerals, and the author explains how to pulverize and mix minerals to produce paints.

Cennino explains every procedure for gessoing, stamping on gold, working on cloth, painting on velvet (yes, it goes back that far), gilding saints' haloes, designing brocades, and embellishing with gold or tin. Much a loss for art history, his instructions for mosaics are regrettably lost.

He author also puts art in context in the rest of creation. Much as he loves art, Cennino subordinates it to thinking, never losing sight of the fact that it is work. But it is a "labor of love."