The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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Grind verdigris many times coloured with lemon juice and keep it  
away from yellow (?).  
Of preparing the panel.  
6
28.  
TO PREPARE A PANEL FOR PAINTING ON.  
The panel should be cypress or pear or service-tree or walnut. You  
must coat it over with mastic and turpentine twice distilled and  
white or, if you like, lime, and put it in a frame so that it may  
expand and shrink according to its moisture and dryness. Then give  
it [a coat] of aqua vitae in which you have dissolved arsenic or  
[
corrosive] sublimate, 2 or 3 times. Then apply boiled linseed oil  
in such a way as that it may penetrate every part, and before it is  
cold rub it well with a cloth to dry it. Over this apply liquid  
varnish and white with a stick, then wash it with urine when it is  
dry, and dry it again. Then pounce and outline your drawing finely  
and over it lay a priming of 30 parts of verdigris with one of  
verdigris with two of yellow.  
[Footnote: M. RAVAISSON'S reading varies from mine in the following  
passages:  
450  


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448 449 450 451 452

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