Luciano Mazzaferro. The 'Original Treatises' by Mary Philadelphia Merrifield. Part One: The Le Bègue Manuscripts

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Luciano Mazzaferro
The 'Original Treatises' by Mary Philadelphia Merrifield
Part One: The Le Bègue Manuscripts


JUNE 2018: This post was published in 2014. Afterwards, an important set of letters were discovered in Brighton. They were sent by Mary Philadelphia Merrifield to her husband from Italy during the trip she conducted there between 1845 and 1846, in search of manuscripts evidencing the artistic techniques of the ancient Italian masters. Much of the information contained in this post may therefore be outdated, incomplete and sometimes incorrect. I published the letters in 2018 in La donna che amava i colori. Mary P. Merrifield. Lettere dall’Italia (1845-1846) – i.e. The Lady Who Loved Colours. Mary P. Merrifield. Letters from Italy (1845-1846) – Milan, Officina Libraria, 2018, isbn 88-99765-70-5. I would therefore like to point out this new publication to anybody interested. Nevertheless, I am keeping the old posts visible, as they testify ​​what information was available before the letters were discovered and how the research on Mary P. Merrifield has evolved in recent years.

*  *  *

Note by Giovanni and Francesco Mazzaferro:

Around 1998, our father, Luciano Mazzaferro, devoted several months to the study of the ‘Original Treatises’ published by Mary Philadelphia Merrifield in 1849. The result of his studies is witnessed by a manuscript of about fifty pages that we are reproducing in full, however divided into four parts: first of all, a part on the manuscripts found by Merrifield in Paris (Le Bègue manuscripts), then one on the Volpato manuscript, later one concerning the manuscripts of Peter and John Edwards, and finally one part concerning all the remainder. The notes to the text are editorial and compiled in 2014, and of course take account of updates which have materialised from the time of compilation to date.

This is also an essay in the series dedicated to Mary Philadelphia Merrifield. The previous, noted on this blog are:

Giovanni Mazzaferro. Mary Philadelphia Merrifield: the Lady from Brighton who Loved Colours;

Caroline Palmer. Mary Philadelphia Merrifield and the Alliance with Science;
Caroline Palmer. Colour, Chemistry and Corsets: Mary Philadelphia Merrifield's 'Dress as a Fine Art'

Fig. 1) List of the writings included in Le Bègue Manuscripts. Part one

Merrifield’s work, which is by its nature an anthology, opens up with a large text (the most extended among those that are presented), which is also an anthology: the manuscript MS. 6741 of the National Library of Paris [1]. Ms Merrifield and other scholars, before and after her, called it "The Manuscripts of Jehan Le Bègue", and used, as you can see, the plural (Manuscripts and not Manuscript) just to emphasise the confluence of texts from different periods and different backgrounds. In short, Merrifield’s anthology begins with another and, of course, a smaller collection of texts. One has almost the impression of being faced with a kind of Chinese box and this feeling is accentuated as soon as one discovers that two of the three Alcherio’s writings included in the Paris manuscript - see below - are clearly divided into parts, each of which deriving from its own source. The whole of the works belonging to the manuscript preserved in the Library of Paris has been described by Merrifield - as indeed, by some other researcher before and after her – as "The Manuscripts of Le Bègue”, because they were copied "with his own hand into one volume" exactly by Le Bègue, who – once the work had been finished -  wrote (p. 321): "Compositus est liberi iste a magistro Johanne le Begue, Licentiato in Legibus, Greffario Generalium Magistrorum Monetae Regis Parisiis, anno Domini 1431, aetatis vero suae 63". We learn that Le Bègue, sixty-three in 1431 and therefore born in 1368, was a man of law and Registrar of the Royal Mint.

Fig. 2) List of the writings included in Le Bègue Manuscripts. Part two

Today, on Le Bègue "humanist and bibliophile" we tend to talk in rather muted tones; at times, one even ends up with denying the qualities (perhaps circumscribed, but certainly not imaginary) which he undoubtedly merited. And this is a not marginal topic on which we will need to speak at the appropriate time. For now it is worth pointing out that, whatever the role to be recognised to Le Bègue may be, the Paris manuscript is a work of exceptional interest. The collection was considered "quite remarkable" by Schlosser who considered it "a true treasure of medieval technique" [2]. Chiara Garzya Romano wanted to remind [3] that the work, although conceived as a "practical manual", has a much wider breath than a customary and often stunted collection of recipes. For its part, Merrifield avoided any peremptory judgments on the entire manuscript, but saw it as a suitable and even indispensable instrument to reconstruct the wording of many works over several centuries, from the Middle Ages to the inauguration of Renaissance. Ms Merrifield used it as a rich mine of information and wanted to examine its many strands. If we observe carefully the statements contained in the next two pages [note of the editor, compare Figures 1 and 2], we realise that she translated into English - and commented on - all the material in the manuscript, with the exception of a single work (De Diversis Artibus by Theophilus).

Perhaps the best way to report on the writings that the researcher included in the publication is to bring them into three groups. To the first group belong the following works:

ERACLIUS, De Coloribus et Artibus Romanorum

From page 166 to page 293 [4]. The text, traditionally attributed to Heraclius, is composed of three books: the first two are in verse; the third (see below Pseudo-Heraclius) in prose. Merrifield realised that only the first two were the original work of Heraclius and supported this view openly, in contrast with the prevalent assessments before her: “The work consisted originally of the metrical parts only; and this supposition gains ground from a consideration of the difference of style observable between the first and second book and the third part and from the fact that the metrical parts contain frequent allusions to the arts of the Romans [note of the editor: it should never be forgotten that the work is dedicated to the colours and the arts practiced by the ancient Romans], which is not the case in the third book, with the exception, perhaps, of the extracts from Vitruvius and Isidore" (p. 170). The author of the first two books, namely Heraclius, was an Italian, “a native perhaps of some part of the Lombard dukedom of Benevento”, town which, according to Sismondi [5], would have kept "under independent princes" and, under the influence of the Greeks to the Arabs, “a degree of civilization which in the earlier part of the middle ages was unexampled throughout the rest of Italy” (p. 171). The work would date back between the eighth and tenth centuries AD.

On the dating of the work (see notes in Table A) it has been often discussed, but the conclusion of considering spurious the third book was no longer seriously debated. In 1915, A. Pellizzari wrote that to Ms Merrifield "did not escape the substantial differences, both in form and content, which justified the suspicion that the poetic part alone constituted the original work of Heraclius, and that the prose, variously ordered and extended according to the various manuscripts, was nothing but an addition ... The fact that the latter part was completely missing " in a code, i.e. that of Valenciennes, of which the English researcher had to know little or nothing "gives to the insightful reasoning of Merrifield the value of a substantially exact intuition" [6]. And here is the opinion expressed by Chiara Garzya Romano in her recent work published by Il Mulino publishers [7], differing in some details from the words of Pellizzari, but still positive. "Mary P. Merrifield... marked a turning point in the studies in 1849. Apart from the merit of having procured a text based on a more extensive, although not exhaustive, manuscript and documentary basis, the scholar above all managed to clearly distinguish the poetic part from the prose in the Treaty: original, the former, while paraphrased and redrafted, the second. ... Since Merrifield the third book was ... considered spurious, and rightly so, by the unanimity of the scholars; nor would it make any more sense to hold together the two works". [8]

The first of the two books attributed to Heraclius is composed of 161 verses divided into a Proem and 13 sections; the second of 53 verses, all divided in paragraphs. The significant disparity between the two books led Pellizzari [9] to assume that the second of the two books was incomplete. The suspicion does not seem arbitrary.

PSEUDO-ERACLIO Tercius Liber et prosaicus Eraclii, antedicti, de Coloribus et Artibus predictis

From page 204 to page 250. Ms Merrifield, while stressing unconditionally and in the clearest way possible that the third book of De Artibus et coloribus was not, nor could be, authored by Heraclius, continued however to present it along with the previous two. In this note, it seemed to the contrary that it would be appropriate to make a step further, also to emphasise the most original aspect of the reading of the manuscript made ​​by Merrifield. Therefore, we separated - with no possibility of any misunderstanding - the third part and attributed it - as indeed in some study it seemed necessary – to an author whose name is unknown, but which might appropriately be termed pseudo-Heraclius. Attribution vague and general, as anybody can see, but in any case sufficient to reiterate the essential, namely that the recipes referring to him belong to another hand than the composer in verse (Heraclius), who was considered (and still is considered) as one of the most sensitive compilers of recipes of the Middle Ages. Another style, another era, another area of compilation.

Merrifield herself helps us effectively to define the scope of activity of this pseudo-Heraclius, in a text that formerly belonged to the library of the Trinity College in Cambridge, and then was forwarded (with the mark 840 A) to the British Museum in London. She discovered a large part of the chapters of the third book, which however were put in a sufficiently systematic order and not, as it happened in the Paris manuscript "at random without any regard to the subject" (p. 173) and, moreover, enriched with various other requirements. Both manuscripts in London and Paris were placed at the end of the two books in verse of Heraclius, and this coincidence was clearly indicating that they descended from a common prototype: a prototype in which the arbitrary confusion had materialised between Heraclius and the written recipes collected by another person. There were, at this point, sufficient hints to attempt a composition of the various parts of the work of this pseudo-Heraclius; Ms Merrifield brought this attempt to term, giving herself some rules and following some hypotheses that here can only be explain in summary, but that be found and evaluated in the "Preliminary Observations" on p. 166 ff.

From the reconstruction she had patiently done, Ms Merrifield derived the conclusion that the Third Book was composed - it would seem better to say ‘built up’ - much later than the actual compilation of Heraclius, since it included “words and expressions and allusions to arts, which appear to belong to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries” (p.174). Unlike Heraclius, Pseudo-Heraclius could not be considered an Italian; to Merrifield it seemed extremely likely that the Third Book had been written “by a Frenchman, under which term I include also the Normans, who were English subjects, at that period” (ibid).

The included recipes are from different backgrounds and it is really interesting to note that some of them are nothing more than transcripts, more or less reworked, of the text due to the real Heraclius. And this is a fact that leads to reiterate that the texts in rhyme, on which we talked about earlier, and the Third Book could not belong to the same collector of recipes or the same drafter. Otherwise, they would obviously be induced to eliminate clear cases of duplication (or even only slightly different variations) in their work.

PIETRO DI SANT'AUDEMARO, Liber de Coloribus Faciendis

The text is reproduced on pages between 116 and 165. As in most of the earlier and subsequent writings, odd pages are reserved to the original text, while even pages contain the English version. A preliminary note of comment occupies pages 112-115.

The author, mostly named as Pietro di Sant’Audemaro, is sometimes referred to as Pierre de Saint'Omere. It is in each case assumed that the work belongs to a Frenchman. Some technical terms prove it; more explicitly, some words are included in the recipe 165 on page 131: "... in hac nostra patria galliae ut in toto Francia…" (… in our homeland Gallia as well as in entire France). According to Eastlake [10], the date of compilation should not be after the end of the thirteenth or, at most, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Ms Merrifield shows some caution and does not exclude the possibility of an earlier date; but her view looks like a simple assumption and I do not think she insists on it particularly. Franco Brunello [11] reports the dating by Eastlake, without putting forward alternative solutions. Chiara Garzya Romano too adheres to the proposal by Eastlake [12].

In Sant'Audemaro’s work appear "recipes for colours, for ink, and for gilding". The topics covered are remembered by Merrifield in the second part of p. 113 and the next two pages.

The headings or recipes are between No. 150 and No. 209. We should then be faced with 60 sections. Their number is reduced to 59, because the recipe 187 "is missing in the original" (p. 150n.)

***

Fig. 3) The National Library of France, The Oval Room, named after Richelieu

With this work terminates what we consider the first group of writings presented in Ms. 6741, i.e. the group of oldest recipes or prescriptions , produced in the Middle Ages or however earlier to that substantial change of thought and taste that immediately precedes Renaissance and is sometimes identified with what one uses to call proto-Renaissance. Thinking about these early works and their acceptance in a collection which bears the date of 1431, one cannot help but return to what was anticipated by others, certainly appropriately. The transition from one historical period to another was not as clear-cut and well defined as in most cases one would believe. In addition to the more recent sources, of which we will discuss shortly, the collection includes recipes and instructions which are antecedent by generations or even centuries to the date of the compilation. The collection created with the Paris manuscript - J. Schlosser writes - is important "not only for his mastery" [13], but also for the general historical significance. It is not without significance that "in an era that already tended toward new paths" it was still considered valuable to copy ancient sources, such as the writing of Heraclius that probably dates back to six centuries before.

Two other aspects should be mentioned at least briefly. To indicate the first of the two aspects, one question is sufficient. Here it is: why did Merrifield transcribe all old manuals on MS. 6741 with the only exception of the Treaty of Theophilus, who - in general assessment - is the most interesting author and the one with a stronger desire to resort to a systematic exposition of the subject? At a first glance, it would seem this is due to the fact that in the MS. 6741 the work of Theophilus is not reproduced in full, since it stops at chapter 27 of Book One, after having dealt with the issues associated with painting. But, taken alone, this interpretation is not entirely convincing. In her work, Ms Merrifield also transcribed some incomplete text and, where it seemed appropriate, she made cuts on her own choice, using the formula of extracts and, at least on one occasion, even failing to inform the reader. To come to a really persuasive conclusion, account should be taken of an unfortunate coincidence: although she was not entirely hostile to perform partial transcripts in reasonable cases, Ms Merrifield must have been in some embarrassment because of the specific situation here, since in 1847 - two years before the edition of the work - Robert Hendrie had prepared and published, obviously inferring from another manuscript, the entire treatise of Theophilus [14]. The comparison between the full version of Hendrie and the markedly partial version, to which the Merrifield would have had to resort, was due to become spontaneously, not surprisingly solving itself at her own expense. Looking at these facts, one has the impression that, on this point, Ms Merrifield had lost the run by a few centimetres only. In front of these new and presumably unexpected fact, Ms Merrifield withdrew in good order and used few words that do not explain everything, but are also sufficient to account for her behaviour: "The whole of the treatise of Theophilus has been recently published, with an excellent English translation and notes, by Mr Hendrie"(p.15). Merrifield does not add anything else. But the meaning is clear: why, at that point, going back to a part only of the First Book of Theophilus, to those twenty-seven chapters included in the Paris manuscript and placed there, in all likelihood, just before the pages of Sant'Audemaro? On these 27 points or sections or chapters will return to reflect [15] first Albert Ilg [16] and other researchers - including C.R. Dodwell [17] - all interested in a philological work (to be performed by its very nature on all available texts, even the incomplete ones), and in a correctly as possible reconstruction of the original text.

Finally, it remains to question how these longstanding texts (from Heraclius to Sant'Audemaro ) have reached Le Bègue who – as it has been said many times - provided to include them in the Paris manuscript . The more linear and less far-fetched solutions are two: those texts were either traced directly by Le Bègue or were sourced from a certain Alcherio, about whom we will soon write, and came only at a later time - along with the compilations prepared by the same Alcherio – to Le Bègue, who then took the decision to include in the manuscript 6741 both the oldest compilations, the writings or records by Alcherio as well his personal contributions. On the path followed by the writings with the oldest date, Merrifield expresses a clear and explicit opinion only when she refers to Heraclius or that Book Three which more appropriately must be attributed to another hand, that the Pseudo- Heraclius. The path followed would be the second: the material, first traced by Alcherio, would have later on come into the hands of Le Bègue. However, it can be reasonably assumed that also the other works (the writing of sant'Audemaro published by Merrifield and the chapters of Theophilus not included in the anthology) have made the same route.

It is now time to give the floor, so to speak, to a second group of studies, also included in the manuscript of the National Library in Paris and displayed in the publication of which we are dealing. These are the writings or, rather, the compilations performed by the just mentioned Alcherio. If we refer to the prospectus B), and we examine its first voices, those placed on the left, it will be easy to detect that the following works, reproduced below, should be attributed to him:

ALCHERIO, De Coloribus Diversis Modis Tractatur

The script is from page 258 to page 279. It dates back to July 1398 and was drafted "per verba et signamenta" (in words and illustrations) by Jacobus Cona “flamingus pictor commorans tunc Parisiis” (A Flamish painter resident at that time in Paris). After reading what is said on Alcherio in the Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Künstler  (General Lexicon of Visual Arts) [18], it may be thought that this just now mentioned Cona was none else but Jacopo Cova, a painter of Bruges, whom shortly afterwards (in 1399) Alcherio recommended to the Capitol of the Cathedral of Milan; nor one can exclude another interpretation , namely, that he was to be identified with Jacques Coëne, whom the Encyclopedia of World Art [19] signals to us as equally "active for some time in the Milan Cathedral" and describes as "careful researcher of the depths of space". But maybe one can push himself or herself even further by claiming that all three names refer to the same artist: the slight difference between Cona and Cova could be a simple clerical error in the transcription of manuscripts, among other things written by different hands, and the Coëne variant would be, without even too much difficulty, the Flemish form of the same name. However one may wish to judge, some points remain certain: the first name is always the same; the news will report punctually to the end of the fourteenth century; both Cova and Coëne came to Milan to give their cooperation in carrying out the on-going work at the Cathedral.

ALCHERIO, De Diversis Coloribus

The paper extends between page 281 and page 291, where the additions by Le Bègue begin. All material, except that which appears in the last short chapter, was taken note of in Paris in August 1398, one month after the previous writing, “in domo Anthonii de Compendio illuminatoris librorum, antiqui hominis, a verbis quae ipse Anthonius sibi dixit” (In the house of Antonius de Compendio, enlightener of books – a very old man, which dictated himself the words) (p. 281). It seems, then, that Alcherio has acted under dictation. To these annotations Alcherio added the last short chapter, the one that bears No. 303 and that contains a recipe received in Milan several years before by Alberto Porzellus (or Porcelli) “perfectissimus in omnibus modis scribendi et formis literarum, qui tunc dum vixit tenuit scolas in Mediolano et docebat pueros et juvenes ad scribendum"(the best in all styles of writing and forms of literature, who held school in Milan in the time in which he lived there, and taught kids and young men how to write) (p. 289). I can add, obtaining the news from the item "Alcherio" of the Enciclopedia dell’Arte Medievale (Encyclopedia of Mediaeval Art) by Treccani publisher [20], that Porcelli was known as "a scribe and supplier of manuscripts for the Visconti family, working in conjunction with the workshop of Benedetto da Como".

ALCHERIO, Experimenta de Coloribus

It is the most extensive and detailed recipe of Alcherio. It goes from page 47 to page 85 and is derived from various sources. The first chapters (from No. 1 to No. 88) were transcribed from Alcherio in March 1409, copying them from a book that had been delivered by Frater Dionysus "of the order of the Servants of St. Mary, an order which, in Milan, is called Del Sacho" (pp. 82 and 84).

Depending on their contents, these loans from Brother Dionysius should be divided into two sub-branches: “the recipes, from Nos. 1 to 47 inclusive, are for colours of various kinds for painting and writing, and other things belonging to the art of miniature painting. Nos. 47 to 88 contain various recipes for working in metals; for hardening iron; for a kind of nigellum; for making a sort of pyrophorus – namely, a light which should burn under water, and which could be estinguished with oil only; and also a candle which should burn with water and without fire” (pp. 4sg). All the recipes were not transcribed in Milan as one would be led to suppose, but in Genoa.

So far the recipes obtained by Frater Dionysius. With chapters from 89 to 99 inclusive, corresponding to pages 85-89, is then presented the material received in Bologna in February 1410 from a certain Theodorico, an embroiderer of Flanders who had been employed in Pavia by Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Theodorico (or Theodore) "gave him certain recipes and directions for preparing and using colored waters" that he had acquired in England (see p. 6 ff. of the preliminary observations of Ms Merrifield). In the next few chapters - from No. 100 to No 116, displayed in the text on p. 90 until the beginning of p. 103 - you can read the recipes which, always in Bologna, and always during the month of February 1410, Alcherio transcribed - or, rather, he let write down – from a handbook by Giovanni da Modena: “a quodam libello magistri Johannis de Modena, pictoris habitantis in Bononia” (a certain booklet from master Giovanni da Modena, painter living in Bologna). The recipes by Giovanni da Modena were compiled in Italian and copied in this language: in manuscript 6741 and, consequently, in the work of Merrifield, however, we find them written in Latin because Le Bègue, ignorant of Italian, had made them translate so to copy them without difficulty: "cum non intelligerem, feci [note of the editor: Le Bègue writes] per quemdam amicum meum, utriusque lingue peritum, in latinum vertii…"(As I was not able to understand, I made it to be translated in latin by a certain friend knowing both languages) (p. 91). From the preliminary notes of Merrifield we come to know, in a very condensed form, the content of recipes: instructions refer “chiefly to colours and to mordants for laying on gold” (p. 9).

Three months later, in May 1410, Alcherio moved to Venice and there acquired a recipe for the blue (see No 117 p. 103 ff.) from "Michelino de Vesucio, pictore excellentissimo pictores inter omnes mundi". (Michelino de Vesucio, one among the most excellent painters of the world). And maybe it is worth to point out that it is Michelino da Besozzo, whom Vasari [21] named among the followers of Giottino, and whom Lomazzo [22] and, much later, Lanzi [23] will quote in their writings. Certainly not such a leading painter worldwide, as it is said in the manuscript, but also not artist with evanescent traits or a faded walk-on.

The last chapter, the 118th (pp. 105-111) is dedicated “ad purgandum, vel afinandum, seu faciendum, azurrum ultramarinum cum pastillo, seu ad faciendum illud de lapide lazulli, trito in pulvere, et purgando pulverem cum pastillo” (to cleanse or refine or produce ultramarine blue with a colour patch, or to make it out of lapislazuli pounded into dust, and clearing the dust with the patch)".  Alcherio stretched the text in Paris in February 1411, following the instructions of Giovanni il Normanno who had lived in the house of Pietro da Verona. It is not unreasonable to suppose that right there, in Verona, Alcherio and Giovanni made their acquaintance.

In the following months Alcherio arranged to give a more satisfactory layout to this, as well as to all his other writings mentioned above. By the end of the year the whole of his work had now assumed that feature and those formal characteristics to which - except for a few additions which will be discussed later - Le Bègue stuck when, twenty years later, he drafted the MS. 6741.

Although the Paris manuscript appeared closely associated with the name of Jean Le Bègue and it was called normally the Le Bègue Manuscripts, Ms Merrifield understood (as far as we know, before others), that the greatest role had to be given, rather than to this humanist, to that Alcherio whose contributions we have just mentioned. This is not only and not so much for the reasonable conjecture that led and still leads to the conclusion that the earliest collections in date, like that of Heraclius, had been indeed collected from Alcherio and came only after several years in the availability of Le Bègue, but rather for reasons of a different nature and more substance. Through continuous, persistent and effective contacts with artists and craftsmen of his age, Alcherio was able to document the operational solutions preferred by those who worked in painting and in other areas of artistic production at the end of 1300 and the dawn of the next century; nor it has to be forgotten - as mentioned earlier - that among people he approached appeared figures like Giovanni da Modena and Michelino da Besozzo, not really unknown and certainly informed about the techniques practiced in their artistic circles, and in some other ones. Drawing from various sources and moving across different countries, Alcherio also confirmed what was otherwise clear, though not always documented, namely that in this age ​​sure information channels had been created and exchanges had occurred on findings and technical solutions within that area of Western Europe where the so-called international Gothic had spread. In short, the Paris manuscript was not only composed of old and fortunate recipe books, but was revived by more recent guidelines and learning; it was suitable to shed some light on how artists operated, on the latest finding and on the taste almost at the threshold of the Renaissance. And the merit of this second and more important result was entirely or almost entirely attributed to the untiring activity of Alcherio.

Of this Alcherio Ms Merrifield could not know anything except what resulted in the annotated manuscript, namely the various travels, meetings with personalities from different artistic significance and the date on which he proceeded to the retrieval and the transcript of the recipes. Ms Merrifield communicates what she has read and does not go much further, knowing well that she was on a treacherous terrain. She does not even pronounce herself clearly on his place of birth, although occasionally she lets the reader believe that Alcherio, having often a working basis in Paris and proceeding right there at the review of his various writings, might have been a Frenchman and, in all likelihood, a Parisian by birth or adoption. She proposes the hypothesis that Alcherio might have been a painter, gives the impression that this track would not mind her at all, but when it comes time to conclude, she warns that – given the state of knowledge – the only fixed point had remained the clear link with the art: "his attachment to the art is unquestionable" (p. 3). Interestingly, almost suggestive, it appears the comparison made by Merrifield between Alcherio and Jehan Le Bègue. On Le Bègue, she writes: “He himself tells us that he was unaccustomed to such writing; and the numerous mistakes throughout the manuscript prove that he told the truth” (page 2). A little rude passage, as you can see. But when the conversation soon moves to Alcherio, then very different words can be heard which that put him immediately on a higher level: "In all that related to the art he was superior to the Jehan le Begue" (p. 3). Moreover, he had the advantage of understanding Italian and - it goes without saying - to collect documentation or other writings, however available, in this language: “he also possessed the additional advantage of understanding Italian, which he acquired in Italy during his occasional visits to that country” (ibid.). It is to be mentioned, among other things, the presence of that "occasional", which I have marked in italics, i.e. to confirm that – according to Ms Merrifield - Alcherio was not at all an Italian and was in Italy for times far from being prolonged.

A few decades after the publication of the work by Merrifield, when the annals of the Fabric of the Milan Cathedral were printed [24], indications emerged that have inevitably led to reconsider certain positions or conjecture by Merrifield. Alcherio knew our language for the simple reason of being Italian, to be exact from Milan. He was interested professionally to problems of art and had gone to various parts of Italy and repeatedly to Paris to perform tasks that the vestry had entrusted to him and, in particular, to find artists to use for the work of the Cathedral: we already mentioned above - of course in passing - his relationship with Cona. We also know some of his opinions for the construction of the vault of the Cathedral. The Allgemaines Lexicon does not hesitate, under the heading concerning him, to call him "Baumeister" (master-builder) but, beyond architecture, he had to prove interest for other genres if, taking advantage of the trips he was doing, he picked material of all different branches of artistic production.

In conclusion, some adjustment to the design outlined by Merrifield should be done. The prominence given to the figure of Alcherio is confirmed, however, and hence it must be added that, in subsequent studies until the most recent ones, this emphasis has gradually grown, to the point to give the Milanese master the entire direction of the work.  Given his respectable social position, Le Bègue was given the position not of a mere transcriber, but of the purchaser of the research and at the same time, of the passionate copier and maybe re-organiser of the material in the MS. 6741. This is however a quite extremist thesis: there are in fact arguments to believe that certain revision processes have been pushed beyond measure and that – in order to ascribe to Alcherio all what he deserves – it has become so to speak mandatory to resize the part of Le Bègue to the point of trivializing it. Le Bègue is fully entitled to merit his own place in the large Parisian manuscript; following the opinion of Merrifield herself, it must be said and pointed out that some parts of the work are certainly his own and cannot be transferred to any other writers or collectors. Alongside old compilations and the significant areas to be attributed to Alcherio, there is a third component that drives us with all reasonableness to Le Bègue.

Keeping an eye on the right side of the table B), it is a duty to identify three processes:

JEHAN LE BÈGUE Receptes en Latin et en François

Ranging from page 291 to page 321. I draw this title from the index that appears at the beginning of the MS. 6741 and that in the edition of Ms Merrifield is reproduced on p. 17. The recipes, of which the vast majority is written in French, are placed at the end of De Diversis Coloribus of Alcherio. Le Bègue does not specify the origin, but there is more than one reason to argue that the material collected from contemporary operators constitutes - unlike what happens to the collections made ​​by Alcherio - a small minority. A curiosity: some recipes, here placed in French, derived from the Latin text of Heraclius and even from the Pseudo-Heraclius.

JEHAN LE BÈGUE, Tabula de vocabulis sinonimi et equivocis colorum

It goes from page 18 to page 39 [23]. The merits of Le Begue would remain very limited and dis-coloured, if his presence were limited only to the recipes mentioned in the previous paragraph. A much higher level of quality can be attributed to this Tabula.

It has been rightly said that its importance is crucial: it is, in fact, a dictionary written in such a way as to be attribute to all the work the character of a true compendium of all painting techniques then known. In the Tabula, which Ms Merrifield attributes with no hesitation to Le Bègue (see p. 3, first sentence), we capture clearly the guidelines, which we would be tempted to define encyclopaedic, of the compiler and his taste for the rational arrangement of the entire discipline. In the work of Le Bègue we capture the hallmarks of a humanistic mentality. More than once, he refers to the Catholicon, a Latin dictionary composed in the late thirteenth century and used to such a large extent also in subsequent periods to induce Gutenberg to include it among his first works in print.

JEAHN LE BÈGUE, Tabulae ad reperiendum

Ranging from p. 39 p. 45, the two tables are unfortunately incomplete. Through them Le Bègue tries to draw up an appropriate index of the subjects covered. Their presence confirms Le Bègue’s intention to give a systematic character to the various instructions in the Paris manuscript. If the Tabula de vocabulis mentioned before is a kind of dictionary, through which definitions are given (and the various terms are highlighted with which substances identical or slightly dissimilar are indicated in times and in different places), the two Tabulae ad reperiendum intend to facilitate the consultation through something similar to a reasoned index by subject. Not surprisingly, in correspondence of each item, the number is displayed with which individual recipes are marked in the manuscript. And, since the same argument has often been touched in most recipes, it happens sometimes to find, for a single voice, two or more numbers. In one case (see last item p. 42) the reference is made to thirteen recipes.

NOTES:

[1] On the manner in which Ms Merrifield came into possession of the anthology by Le Bègue, see what she wrote on page 1 note 2: "We owe the first report on the manuscript to Lessing, who mentions it in his Treatise [note of the editor: the first printed edition of De diversis Artibus of Theophilus]. Lessing, however, was not acquainted with the work, and he quoted only the title, drawing it from the Catalogue of Manuscripts in the library mentioned above [note of the editor: the Royal Library in Paris], and believing that it contained a copy of the manuscript of Theophilus. And in fact, it contains most of the first book of this author. Raspe and Emeric David both mention the manuscript, but only with reference to the copy of Theophilus; the remainder (and largest part) of the manuscript appears to have remained unknown until 1842 or 1843, when Count Charles de l'Escalopier procured himself a copy of the entire writing to complete his translation of Theophilus. In the fall of 1844 I went to Paris to get hold of a copy of the manuscript, which I got after an unavoidable delay."

[2] Schlosser, La letteratura artistica (The literature on art), 3rd updated edition, Florence, La Nuova Italia publisher, 1967, p. 32.

[3] Heraclius, I colori e le arti dei Romani e la compilazione pseudo-eracliana. (The colours and the arts of the Romans and the pseudo-Heraclean compilation). By Chiara Garzya Romano, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1996, p. 42.

[4] Of the text of Heraclius and of the pseudo- Eraclean composition exists a modern edition by Chiara Garzya Romano (see endnote 3 above).

[5] J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques italiennes du Moyen Age (History of the Italian Republics during Middle Age), 1807-1818.

[6] Achilles Pellizzari, I trattati attorno le arti figurative in Italia e nella Penisola iberica dall’antichità classica al Rinascimento e al secolo XVIII. Vol. I: Dall’antichità classica al secolo XIII, (The treaties on the visual arts in Italy and the Iberian peninsula from classical antiquity to the Renaissance and the eighteenth century. Vol. I: From classic antiquity to the thirteenth century), Naples, F.Perrella, 1915, p. 391.

[7] Heraclius, the Colours and the arts of the Romans ... quoted, P. 15-16.

[8] To be noted that, according to Ms Garzya Romano, the author of the two books would be a Venetian of the eighth century AD.

[9] Achilles Pellizzari, Treaties ... quoted, P. 407.

[10] Charles Lock Eastlake, Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters, New York, Dover Publications, 1960, reprint di Materials for a History of Oil Painting (1847), p. 45.

[11] Franco Brunello, De arte illuminandi e altri trattati sulla tecnica della miniatura medievale (De arte illuminandi and other treatises on the technique of medieval illumination), Vicenza, Neri Pozza publisher, 1975, p. 19n .

[12] Heraclius, The colours and the arts of the Romans ... quoted, p. 42.

[13] Schlosser, La letteratura artistica ... quoted, p. 32.

[14] Robert Hendrie (editor), An Essay upon Various Arts, in Three Books, by Theophilus called also Rugerus, Priest and Monk, Londra, John Murray, 1847.

[15] Theophilus, On divers Arts. A cura di John G. Hawthorne e Cyril Stanley Smith. New York, Dover, 1979. Reprint of 1963 edition published by University of Chicago Press. p. 18.

[16] Theophilus Presbyter, Schedula Diversarum Artium. Edited by Albert Ilg. Vienna, Braumüller, 1874.

[17] Theophilus, De Artibus diversis. A cura di C.R. Dodwell. London and Edinburgh , Nelson, 1961

[18] Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Universal Lexicon of Visual Artists, from Antiquity to Modern). Edited by H. Vollmer. Leipzig, Seeman, 1940, Vol. I, p. 237.

[19] Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte (Universal Encyclopedia of Art), Florence, Sansoni, 1958. Vol. VI, col. 458.

[20] Enciclopedia dell’Arte Medievale. (Encyclopedia of Medieval Art). Rome, Treccani, 1991 see respective item (edited by B. Soldano Tosatti ).

[21] Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori. (Lives of Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects). Edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi. Text, Vol. II, p. 235. Firenze, Sansoni publisher, 1967.

[22] Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti (Writings on the arts). Edited by Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, Centro Di publisher, 1974. Vol. II p. 315 and 353.

[23] Luigi Lanzi , Storia pittorica della Italia (History of Painting in Italy), Edited by Martino Capucci, Vol. II, p. 279. Firenze, Sansoni, 1970.

[24] Gli Annali della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano dall'origine al presente (The Annals of the Fabric of the Milan Cathedral from the origin to the present), 9 vols., Milan from 1877 to 1885 .

[25] The Tabula was studied by Bianca Tosatti in B. Soldano Tosatti, La ''Tabula de vocabulis sinonimis et equivocis colorum'', ms. lat. 6741 della Bibliothèque Nationale di Parigi in relazione a Giovanni Alcherio, (The ''Tabula de vocabulis sinonimis et equivocis colorum”, MS. lat. 6741 of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, in relation to John Alcherio), ACME. Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Università di Milano (ACME. Annals of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Milan) 36, 1983, pp. 129-187. We did not have the opportunity to consult the work.