By Mrs. Merrifield: "In the year 1431, Jehan le Begue, a licentiate in the law and Notary of the Masters of the Mint at Paris, being then in the sixty-third year of his age, composed, or rather compiled, the following manuscript, from a collection of works on painting made by one Jehan Alcherius, or Alcerius. The motive that induced Jehan le Begue to undertake the work does not appear. He himself tells us that he was unaccustomed to such writing; and the numerous mistakes throughout the manuscript prove that he told the truth. But, whatever might have been his inducements, the zeal with which he undertook the work, and the manner in which he executed his task, show his attachment to the arts, and his desire to obtain information on all subjects connected with it.
His authorities seem to have been the works collected by Alcherius, and the Catholicon, which was then in manuscript, and which was not printed until twenty-nine years after Jehan le Begue completed his work. Of the early life and profession of Jehan Alcherius, or Archerius, the manuscript gives no indications. It does not actually appear that he was a painter, but his attachment to the art is unquestionable, or he would not have taken the pains he did to become acquainted with the technical processes, and to write clown so many recipes from the dictation of others. In all that related to the art he was superior to Jehan le Begue ; he also possessed the additional advantage of understanding
Italian, which he acquired in Italy during his occasional visits to that country.
The earliest biographical notice of Alcherius is dated March, 1382, at which time he left Milan for Paris, taking with him a recipe for making writing-ink, which had been given to him by Alberto Porzello, "who was most perfect in all kinds of writing and forms of letters, and who, while he lived, kept a school at Milan, and taught boys and young men to write." In 1398 Alcherius was at Paris. On the 28th of July, in that year, he wrote his treatise ' De Coloribus diversis modis tractatur,' from the dictation of Jacob Cona, a Flemish painter, then living at Paris. This treatise relates chiefly to miniature painting, and its usual accompaniment gilding. On the 8th of August follow ing he wrote another short treatise, which also relates to the same subject, entitled ' De diversis Coloribus,' from the dictation of Antonio di Compendio, "an illuminator of books, and an old man," who had tried all
the recipes himself. Nothing more is known of him from that time until the month of March, 1409, when it appears he was again at Milan, where he copied the recipes at the commencement of the work as far as No. 88, from a book lent to him by Fra Dionisio, a Servite, or, as it is expressed in the manuscript, " of the order of the Servants of St. Mary, which order in Milan is called 'Del Sacho.'"
Ink recipes from (the first 50 or so entries have to do with illumination):
Experimenta de coloribus by Jehan le Begue, based on earlier work by Jehan Alcherius, 1431.
Part of Volume 1 of Mrs. Merrifield's Original Treatises, Dating from the XIIth to the XVIIIth Centuries, [o]n the Arts of Painting (p. 320).
1. Know that gold letters are thus written with the following water. Take of sulphur vivum, of the inner bark of the pomegranate, of alum, salt, and gold dust (?), as much as you like, and liquid gum water and a little saffron. Mix, and write.
2. To erase black letters upon paper. —Make a water from the following things. Take nitre, and Roman vitriol, of each one pound, and distil them in an alembic, and a clear water will
be produced ; with this water slightly moisten a sponge, and rub the letters with it.
21. To erase letters on parchment without injury to the paper. —Take a hare's skin and dress it, and salt it down, afterwards dry it over the smoke of a fire, and reduce it to powder ; put some of this powder upon the letters which you wish to erase, and rub them with pumice-stone, and the letters will be erased without injury to the paper.
27. To erase letters from parchment.—Take the juice of an orange and dip cotton or sponge in it, and rub it lightly upon the letters, and it will erase them perfectly. But as the parchment will be wetted and made soft, it must be rendered dry and white in the following manner :—Take white lime in
powder and mix it with clear water, and afterwards strain through a piece of white linen, dip cotton in the water which has been strained and dab it upon the parchment where it is soft, and it will become white and firm. I think it would be better to dip the cotton in dry lime, and not to wet it.
28. To make a green ink for writing.—Take of good vinegar oz. ij., sal ammoniac oz. ij., common salt oz. ij., brass filings oz. ij., put them all together in a glass flask for six days, and it will make a green ink, which you must strain and keep for use.
29. To make excellent azure.—Take of sal ammoniac oz. iij., and of verdigris oz. vi., mix them together and make them into a paste with solution of tartar, and put them into a glass jar,
which you must stop up, and lute, and place in warm dung, and let it stand there for some days, and when you take it up you will find the green changed to excellent azure.
30. For the same.—Take of alum scagliola one part, of vinegar two parts ; grind them together upon a slab, and make them boil a little in a glass or other vase, and put them into a glass flask and bury them in dung for five days or more, until you see it is become of a blue colour.
31. Good ink is thus made. —Take 1 1/2 lb of pounded galls, soak them in warm rain water, or warm wine or vinegar, of the quantity of 10 phials, and so let it stand for a day or more; then boil it until the said water, wine, or vinegar is reduced to one-third, and let it be taken off the fire and a phial or two
of wine or vinegar be immediately added, and let so much water be added as was boiled away from the said mixture, and let them all be put on the fire again. When the mixture be gins to boil let it be removed from the fire ; when it is only just warm strain it, and add to it 1 1/2 lb. of gum-arabic in
powder and 1 lb. of Roman vitriol, and mix the whole together.
33. Cement for joining parchment is thus made.—Take gum arabic and whipped white of egg, dissolve the gum in this white of egg and let it dry in the sun, and when you wish to use it wet the edge of the piece with your tongue and lips and apply it to the parchment where the pieces are to be joined, and let it dry in the shade, and the pieces will adhere firmly together. But if you wish to join paper only and not parchment, wheat-flour or powdered bread-crumbs mixed with pure water and slightly boiled is very good for paper. But if you mix a little gum-arabic or whipped white of egg with it, it will do for parchment.
34. If you wish to erase letters from paper, take roche alum, and grind it, and make it into a paste with the juice of an orange, and expose it to the wind, and let it dry ; afterwards rub it upon the letters, and it will erase them from the paper.
38. If you wish to remove oil from parchment or letters, take bones of chicken or capons, and burn them until they are white, and reduce them to powder. Lay some of this powder on the place where the oil is, and let it stand, in summer in the shade, and in the sun in winter. If necessary, repeat this two or three times. Lime also is good for this purpose.
47. To make good ink for writing, particularly for books. —Take 4 bottles of good wine, white or red, and 1 lb. of galls, slightly bruised, which must be put into the wine, and allowed to stand in it for 12 days, and be stirred every day with a stick. The twelfth day it must be strained through a strainer of fine linen, and must be poured into a clean jar, and put on the fire to get hot, until it almost boils. Then remove it from the fire, and when it has cooled so as only to be tepid, put into it 4 oz. of gum-arabic, which must be very bright and clear, and stir it with a stick, then add £ lb. of Roman vitriol, and stir it continually with the stick, until all things are well incorporated together, and let it cool and keep it for use. And note, that ink made with wine is good for writing books upon the sciences, because, when books are written with it, the letters do not fade, and can hardly be scraped out or discharged from parchment or paper. But if they are written with ink made with water, it is not so, for they can easily be scraped out, and it may happen that the letters written with it will fade.
4 bottles of wine, or water, or half of each.
1 pound of galls of xij. oz. to the pound
4 oz. of gum arabic.
6 oz. of Roman vitriol.
And if you took equal parts of each, galls, gum, and vitriol, as much of one as of the other, by weight, it would still be good ; as, for instance, 6 oz. of each, which would be sufficient for the said 4 lbs. of wine or water, or of wine and water mixed as before.
50. To write with black on gold or silver.—Take burnt lead and sulphur, distemper them together, and write on the gold or silver ; then heat it with fire, and the desired effect will be produced.
Mary Merrifield's "Original Treatises on
the Arts of Painting", published in 1849
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