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PAINTING MATERIALS

in this mirror image. Probably such reflecting surfaces have been useful to painters
since they were first invented. Leonardo da Vinci (Treatise on Painting, Rigaud
translation, C. 350, p. 150) says that a mirror is useful in reflecting the object that
is being painted in a position for comparison with the painting itself. Both then
have a flat appearance, 'an even superficies/

FIGURE 13. Grinding implements: (a) mortar and pestles of alabaster from a late classical
find (Berger, I and II, 215, fig. 47); (£) a table with slab and probably a jug of oil, in a
French miniature of the XV century (from Berger, III, 231, fig. 16); (c) stone slab and
muller set on a wooden block, as shown in a painting by G. Dow, 'An Old Painter*
(private collection, London).

Model. Objects used by draughtsmen and painters to serve as models from
which to work are, of course, innumerable, and any object in a room or studio
could become such a model. Certain kinds of objects, however, have been taken
up so regularly and so exclusively for this purpose that it is possible to consider
them as furniture of the painter. (Among these are inanimate figures; see Cast,
Anatomical Figure, Lay Figure, and Manikin.) Renaissance literature on painting
indicates that before that time hills, mountains, grottoes, and similar features in
the landscape were drawn from rocks which could be studied at close range or
set on a worktable. It appears, also, that foliage may have been described by
repeating small areas drawn from branches brought indoors. From the Renais-
sance on, direct representation of small objects has continued, and painters'
studios are represented as containing a variety of fabrics, costumes, armor, and
similar things clearly to be used as models. A more affected type of small model,
made and sold as such, seems to be a device of the XIX century. By 1870 the
catalogue of Winsor and Newton advertises J. D. Harding's * Drawing Models/
These were architectural blocks made up in cubic shapes, for, as the catalogue puts
it, the cube was the unit and basis of all solid and rectangular figures, including