The Craftsman's Handbook: "Il Libro dell' Arte"

This book was recommended to me a year ago at a scribal arts meeting for illuminators and I was intrigued. A year later I bought the book to get my "free shipping" and I'm kicking myself for waiting! It is filled with exactly what it says...historical drawing techniques as well as recipes and keen insight into the materials used by the great masters. This is a wonderful book for those of us who are medieval re-enactors, and who are wanting to teach and demonstrate the authentic methods to a modern audience. As an added bonus for SCAdians, this is a primary resource since it is an actual translation from a medieval manuscript. BIG cha-ching!

Amazing the information contained in this book. Anyone attempting the art of Egg Tempera will find it most useful.

This book was exactly what I needed! I was working as a propmaster for a play set in Italy during the 16th century, and needed to make historically accurate brushes. There are scarce few pictures of art supplies during that period, so this book was an amazing find. I was able to make brushes by following the instructions fairly easily, and learned so much about different art techniques during that period in history. A fantastic book, whether you need it for a reference, love history, or love art. I would definitely recommend this book.

Fast shipping. Interesting book. Great for an artist's library.

When exactly Cennino Cennini put together his famous handbook is not clear. It must have been quite early in the fifteenth century, for although his stated intention is to provide advice "for the use and good and profit of anyone who wants to enter this profession" (1), he has only very little to say about oil painting and seems unaware of the latest developments of that exciting new medium in the early decades of the century. (It was enough, though, to disprove the contention of Giorgio Vasari and others that oil painting had been invented by Jan van Eyck.) In any case, it is absolutely a book intended for the professional, for the active practitioner, the working artist, and one can note that most of the reviewers on this site have praised it for the practical advice it provides. It has also been reported that it was an important source-book and wellspring of useful technical information for Eric Hebborn, the notorious English art forger and author of his own handbook ("The Art Forger's Handbook," 1997), who is reputed to have employed Cennini's technique of using egg-white to simulate the appearance of aged varnish.I am not an artist and have never painted anything but some old furniture, a couple of book-cases and a dog house--and I must confess to never even having forged a Renaissance masterpiece--so to me this book is of no practical use, but it is greatly entertaining as well as historically informative. Just to realize the huge amount of preparatory labor a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century artist had to accomplish in order to get ready to work adds a humbling perspective to the art we so easily admire on the walls of our museums. And there are some wonderful insights into the times, too, such as the use of chicken bones: the older the better, "just as you find them under the dining-table" (5) and, while giving "the exact proportions of a man," dispensing with those of a woman, "for she does not have any set proportion" (48). There is practical advice here for almost anything a contemporary artist might have been called upon to do, from drawing for embroiderers to waterproofing a wall with boiled oil, but behind it all is Cennino's sense of his profession as having the dignity of a calling and requiring a measured life-style, "just as if you were studying theology, or philosophy," and he admonishes the fledgling artist to eat and drink moderately and, in order to ensure an unwavering and unfluttering hand, to avoid "indulging too much in the company of woman" (16). Obviously, times have changed, and that makes up a great deal of the charm of this book for one like myself, who is not about to enter the profession but who nevertheless also found in it much "use and good and profit."

The translation is really charming and has so much magic to it.It is lovely and the stories and the procedural descriptions aremagical just the same.Love it.

This book has it all for the scribal enthusiast. Written in Latin and later translated into English, this book holds the secrets and techniques of the great masters. It served as an art student's introduction to the ways of the scribal craft then as it can for you today. This is a must for the creative person who appreciates the artisan masters of 15th century Florence and wants to learn from their experience.

I must say that this book has already taught me much about mixing colors, and the craft of the artist even in the brief snippets I've been able to read so far. While primarily of use for oil painting, the information about color mixing, and the qualities of the colors themselves, as well as the technical aspects of the craft are priceless. I am finding this exploration of art fascinating.

Excelente

A handbook every painter should own. We should be so grateful such a work has been handed over to pisterity as so many great "recipies" of oil painting techniques have been lost due to the guild's oath on secrecy, and are only now being gradually rediscovered via technological anaysis.

Like this product for cleaning my car and home and so fast delivery

L’avevo letto in italiano originale , questa traduzione in inglese è ottima

It's the first time I've seen the colour triangle theory and it makes so much more sense than the colour wheel. I'm going to try to adapt it to teach it at a guild meeting.