To Redden (Rougir): the Language of Color, Observation, and Transformation in Ms. Fr. 640
Roya Chu, Fall 2024
The interests of Ms. Fr. 640’s author-practitioner were highly disparate, and yet there is one noticeable thread that runs through the disordered recipes of the manuscript – color.1 Color emerges as a prominent concern across recipes for metalwork, glasswork, woodwork, painting, material imitation and sleight of hand tricks. The author-practitioner’s fascination with color can be gleaned from many aspects, from his emphasis on the decorative value of his crafts (e.g., his interest in producing colored wood among all aspects of woodwork), to his frequent allusion to color changes as procedural references in his late sixteenth-century Toulousain workshop.2 The epistemological attention to color transformation in this manuscript was far from unusual within the broader genre of artisanal writings from this period. Before it was reclassified as a reflection of light with the advent of optical theory in the seventeenth century, color, instead of light, served as the basic unit in discussions of visual observation in early modern Europe.3 As a manuscript that focuses heavily on metalwork recipes, the color red bears a remarkably heavy imprint in the pages of Ms. Fr. 640. Among the 130 mentions of the color red in the manuscript, it can be found in the form of its verb – “to redden” (rougir) – in 43 cases.
Due to the importance of color to the early modern artisan’s observational epistemology, color references tend to blend easily into the discursive background of artisanal texts. For instance, the English translation of the manuscript for Secrets of Craft and Nature occasionally uses the terms “heat” (chaleur) and “redden” (rougir) interchangeably when describing the heating of metals [e.g. fol. 40r, 48v]. Previous examinations of color for Secrets of Craft and Nature suggest that the manuscript treats optical effects and substance-processes as inseparable, reflected in the author-practitioner’s use of “or mat” to refer to both the gold color created by gilding and the material process of gilding itself.4 Another study highlights how color offered a semantic resource for encoding and thus articulating “ineffable” artisanal practices that rely on tacit knowledge.5 Encoding knowledge was a very common and useful strategy in the early modern workshop, where material and environmental conditions tended to be highly variable. Qualitative visual cues, such as indications of color or consistency, often provided artisans with more precise instructions than fixed quantitative measurements.6 These insights on the author-practitioner’s use of colors clarify his approach to material generation as a process that simultaneously engages form and substance, human artifice and nature’s transformational forces.7 Colors, visual deception and counterfeit materials therefore constituted an important facet of the author-practitioner’s efforts to imitate nature’s material creations.
This productive dialogue on the interlinked nature of the visual and material worlds in the manuscript has, however, often conditioned researchers to overlook the uniqueness of visual language within the semantic world of Ms. Fr. 640. This tendency risks conflating a verb like “redden” with “heat,” or equating the verb simply with the action of making something turn red, which may cause the nuanced meanings and application of these terms to slip away. Rather, the author-practitioner’s frequent alternation between “redden” and its alternatives underscores a conscious effort to maintain their semantic distinctions (see his repetition of “reheat & redden” (recuire & rougir) [fols. 81v, 119r, 119v, 161r], and pairing of “redden” (rougir) with “inflame” (enflammer) and “ignition” (ignition) [fols. 12v, 111r, 148v]). How, and why, then, did the author-practitioner distinguish between visual indications and material changes? Why did colors, specifically, play such an important role in both the author-practitioner’s semantic toolset, and in how he chooses to frame many of his artisanal recipes?
Redness, Heat, and the Body (Corps) in Ms. Fr. 640
The verb “to redden” (rougir) often appears alongside “to reheat” (recuire) in the manuscript, such as: “I reheated it [latten – a copper alloy], that is to say reddened” [fol. 147v], or “reheating is to redden the frame” [fol. 118v]. One possible way of interpreting “redden” in this context is to treat it as an optical observation, a description of the color change observed in metals when they reach a certain temperature. The red color change was indeed a familiar formula used by the author-practitioner to quantify heat intensity in metalwork recipes [e.g., fols. 57r, 115v, 128r–v, 140v, 149r, 151r]. For instance, his advice for softening lead and tin with heat was to “melt it without reddening it” [fol. 150r]. Color change in metals, more generally, was a useful indicator of when metals were ready for casting: “When gold reaches its perfect heat, it is green like an emerald” [fol. 124v]; “When it [lead] is very hot, it becomes blue, let it then pass this color & rest a little before casting” [fol. 72v].
However, the author-practitioner’s use of “reddening” as a verb was not
confined to a literal observation of a material’s manifested color. It
is important to note that he does not use colors as verbs to refer to
heating procedures which result in other color changes aside from the
color red. In the entries quoted above, the author-practitioner simply
states that gold should appear “green” (verd) and lead “blue”
(bleu), when each was heated to a sufficient temperature. Similarly,
the color “white” (blanc) remains a noun in a recipe that describes
heating latten, where latten is made “white from the force of being hot”
(fort blanc de force d’estre chault). Meanwhile, the verb “whitening”
(blanchiment) is associated only with the opposite meaning of
“cooling” (refroidir) in this recipe [fol.
147v].
In yet another recipe “for whitening enilanroc” (i.e., cornaline, a
red gemstone) under heat, the author-practitioner crossed out “redden”
from the initial phrase “redden & ignition” (“rougir & prendre
ignition”) [fol.
12v].
This editorial change suggests an original impulse to use “redden &
ignition” as a formulaic expression for heating, regardless of the
optical effect produced by it (which is turning red cornaline white in
this case). Such examples indicate that terms like “redden” and “whiten”
had acquired lives of their own beyond describing literal optical
changes. Rather, rougir was decoupled from the visual effect of
turning red to evoke, more broadly, a material transformation induced by
heat in the author-practitioner’s material imaginary.8
The way in which Ms. Fr. 640 uses the language of color is not explicitly acknowledged in contemporary dictionaries. The Dictionnaire du Moyen Français only defines rougir as “to become red” (“devenir rouge”).9 Cotgrave’s 1611 French-English dictionary, however, notes an additional use: “to blush, to grow red.”10 An expression similar to this, “rougir de honte” (to blush with shame), can be found in a French-Latin dictionary from 1606, which alludes to the association between rougir and human bodily transformations.11 This link between the red color and blush can be traced to Galenic and Hippocratic humoral theory, in which the human body is understood as consisting of four humoral fluids – black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood – each of which corresponds to a color – black, yellow, white and red. The body’s exterior complexion is believed to reflect the internal balance of these humors, with the red color signifying a sanguine temperament, connected to the movement of “blood” under the influence of the heart’s vital heat. Blushing, in particular, is conceptualized as the result of heated blood rushing to the face, stirred by emotions that disrupt the balance of humoral fluids in the body. Heat and cold would affect this balance – moderate heat produced red blood and excessive heat yellow bile, while moderate cold resulted in white phlegm and excessive cold in black bile.12 This understanding of how the colors of the face may reveal one’s bodily complexion informed the Renaissance artistic taste for portraits with an even, white complexion, enlivened by red blush on the cheeks.13
Yet in the early modern context, color was not situated within a discourse of observation that draws a direct equation between external appearance and material composition. The humor “blood” (haima), which differs from veinous blood, is a metaphorical reference to hydraulic processes occurring within the body’s inner world which are not readily visible to the eye.14 Blood, heat, and redness were embedded in a physiological epistemology that considered the body a constitution of internal humors, spirits, and habits – but the holistic body amounted to something more than a mere mechanistic sum of its components.15 It was not until the seventeenth century that vision became a privileged epistemic approach tied to the notion of so-called scientific objectivity, which elevated color observations to an authoritative position in indicating material composition.16
While color was likewise an important epistemic resource for early modern authors, they tended to consider it an unpredictable manifestation of complex, often obscured, corporeal changes. The Dutch physician Levinus Lemnius writes in Touchstone of Complexions (1576): “There is no surer way (sayth Galene) certainly to knowe the humours and juyce in a Creature, then by the colour and outward complexion.” Yet Lemnius also cautions that complexion has an unstable relationship with humors, as “[passions] make the humours sometyme to resort unto the skynne & utter parts, and sometime to hyde and conveyghe themselves farre inwardly.”17 Alluding to a similar notion of concealment, blush was an eroticized trope of the female body in this period, because it drew the observer’s attention to the hidden, inner workings of the body. The rush of heated blood to the face drew on the metaphorical imaginary of bodily heat to evoke ideas about fertility and sexual ripeness.18 In the context of theater, scriptwriters considered blush as something that was almost impossible to imitate on stage, because it was notoriously difficult to control the complex emotions causing blood to run to the face. Applying cosmetics to redden the performer’s face was thus considered insufficient to imitate the emotions underlying a genuine blush. As a result, theatrical performances preferred to rely on dialogue instead of enactment to convey a character’s blush, in order to avoid the risk of the audience misinterpreting the performer’s complexion.19
Although artisanal texts like Ms. Fr. 640 offer a different genre of writing, the author-practitioner’s use of rougir echoes this wider discourse for understanding bodily transformation. Deploying rougir reflected an editorial choice to foreground the transformative power of heat in the artisanal practice described. The diverse array of materials that are subject to rougir in the manuscript – including mineral salts, yellow pigments, glass, clay earth, tiles, sand, charcoal, crayfish and metallic vessels (molds, pots, crucibles and containers) – share the common condition of appearing in procedures that employ fire. This is in line with the appearance of rougir in the artistic techniques of Ms. Sloane 2052, a manuscript compiled by Sir Theodore de Mayerne between 1620 and 1646, in which he uses rougir to describe the transformation of yellow pigments into red when heat is involved.20 Ms. Fr. 640 contains a similar recipe for turning yellow orpiment (a mineral commonly used as a yellow pigment) into a red pigment, which uses rougir as well [fol. 9v]. Meanwhile, the manuscript does not use rougir to describe working or painting with red pigments when heat is not involved.
More specifically, the action verb rougir elicits a comparison between the capacity of heat to vitalize the human body and the material “body” (corps). In a set of instructions for heating molds, the author-practitioner writes: “One needs to heat well & evenly redden the molds” [fol. 143v]. While heating is performed by the artisan, rougir is often depicted as a process enacted by heat. Similar to how vital heat enlivens the body and reddens the human face, heat was also quite “alive” in material bodies in Ms. Fr. 640. There are a few times when the author-practitioner selects the phrase, “it withstands the fire & reddens” (“il soubstient le feu & se rougist”) – employing the reflexive form or rougir, “se rougir” – to capture how material bodies respond to heat by reddening themselves [fols. 106v, 119v]. Redness, furthermore, exhibits an almost contagious ability to quickly spread beyond the artisan’s control, which leads the author-practitioner to warn the reader that when heating molds, “when [the mold] begins to redden, it is soon red everywhere” [fol. 132v]. This language dovetails with the broader anthropomorphic discourse of the corps found in the manuscript, which represents colors as being predisposed to “run,” “die,” become “imbibed,” etc.21 The author-practitioner intentionally crossed out and replaced the term “pass” (passer) with “die down” (amortir) when accounting for the retreat of redness from a hot casting frame [fol. 119r]. The idea of redness dying corresponds, again, to the humoral notion of how vital heat dies as a result of external stimuli such as grief.22
Ms. Fr. 640 was not alone in employing this somatic lexicon to articulate artisanal processes. In his records and observations on artisanal practices in Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664), Robert Boyle notes a similar use of “sanguine” by artisans to refer to the reddening of steel under a flame:
holding it [steel] so in the flame of a Candle… you shall after a while see that clean end, which is almost contiguous to the flame, pass very nimbly from one Colour to another, as from a brighter Yellow, to a deeper and reddish Yellow, which Artificers call a sanguine, and from that to a fainter first, and then a deeper Blew.23
The language of reddening allowed artisans to tap into well-established physiological linkages between heat, blood, the sanguine temperament and bodily complexion to conceptualize and thus articulate the material changes they were enacting in material bodies. Beyond the color red, the author-practitioner draws similar associations between whitening and cooling through the metaphor of phlegm [fol. 147v], as does he associate yellowing with excessive heat, calling to mind the formation of yellow bile in the body [fol. 53v].
Animated Colors as Technical Processes
How, then, does the author-practitioner selectively deploy colors as verbs vis-à-vis other action verbs (e.g. “heat,” “color,” “gild”)? How does he determine which materials and processes can be subject to this language of animated colors? In a recipe for softening iron for engraving, for example, he only gives instructions to “make it [iron] reheat until it is very red” (“le fais recuire jusques à ce qu’il soict bien rouge*”*) [fol. 149r]. In contrast, he applies rougir generously when he describes the heating of molds in the manuscript’s impressive collection of metal casting recipes. The author-practitioner’s choice to limit the use of rougir to certain processes, even while metals like iron exhibit a red color when heated, suggests that the use of colors as verbs introduces another dimension of technical details to the material imaginary of Ms. Fr. 640.
The verb “to color” (colorer) is widely used among recipes for generating color effects on objects in the manuscript, such as recoloring metalwork [e.g., fols. 7r, 76v] and stones [e.g., fol. 100v–101r] to imitate precious materials, or transmuting wine as a sleight of hand trick [fol. 43v]. In these recipes, colorer refers to an optical result which is applied, often externally, upon an object – such as coating latten and tinsel stampings in gold or layering gold leaves over stones to make counterfeit rubies.
More revealingly, the manuscript’s gilding recipes reserve the action,
colorer, for a specific step in the gilding process. “First one needs
to wash that which one wants to gild in wine lees… & put down your
colors on your iron or tin, or other” [fol.
76v].
While the author-practitioner uses “gild” (dorer) to refer to the
holistic recipe, he shifts to the expression of putting down colors when
addressing the procedure that intends to enhance the color of the gilded
item. This is the case in another recipe for gilding on wood as well, as
the recipe was concerned with producing a beautiful gold color on wood:
“If your gold does not have beautiful enough color…” [fol.
75v].
Indeed, this recipe is followed by another, “for making very beautiful
color of gold” [fol.
76v],
which precisely deals with enhancing the gold color of items gilded in
gold foil. In another gilding recipe, the author-practitioner makes a
deliberate choice between “colored” (coloré) and “gilded” (doré):
“Once you have gilded colored, make your stamping either in tin, as
is said, or in iron dest or copper” [fol.
7r].
As the title of this entry – “for gilding with gold color and
tinsel” – suggests, it foregrounds, again, the production of a gold
color effect. Therefore, this recipe addresses how to create a gold
effect after one has gilded with tinsel: “And if you have gilded with
tinsel, color it with smoke of partridge or of yellow or red cloth, &
it will be beautiful like fine gold.”
In contrast, the author-practitioner uses “guild” (dorer) to foreground a different procedural focus. In a recipe “for molding hollow and very delicately in fine gold, dorer appears in the context of discussing the thickness and uniformity of the gilding:
Next, gild [dorer] it with fine gold, as uniform as it will be possible for you, three or four or five times, & until your gold has the thickness of a piece of paper or something similar, & all the scales will always show equally. [fol. 119v]
Another recipe for “very light and hollow work of gold” uses dorer to draw attention to a similar matter of thickness:
Next, gild [dorer] it lightly. And once the first gilding is done & dried by fire, brighten, rub with a scratch-brush, & make another layer of light gilding like the first time, & do thus three or four times or more, according to the thickness you want to give. [fol. 156r]
Thus, while recipes targeting color results employ colorer, others, which focus on the thickness, evenness or consistency – or in other words, the “body” (corps) – of the material adopt dorer instead.24
The implications of colorer are furthermore differentiated from the verb of each individual color. Notably, gilding recipes refer to the yellow or gold color only as a noun, such as: “you will put down a layer of yellow gold [d’ore jaulne]” [fol. 75v]. The verb “to yellow” (jaulnir), in contrast, only appears in the context of unwanted color corruption, associated with oil and, occasionally, also heat. Jaulnir is thus most common in varnishing recipes:
Thus you will give it [turpentine oil] whatever body you want. It could be made well without fire, but, when heated, it is more desiccative. It is appropriate for panel paintings and other painted things without corrupting the colors or yellowing [jaulnir]. [fol. 3r; see also 4r, 47r, 97v]
In contrast, when a yellow color is the intended outcome of the recipe, the author-practitioner refrains from using jaulnir and instead retains the noun, as seen in recipes “for bronzing in yellow and white” (pour bronser de blanc et jaulne) [fol. 5v], or, “for making yellow varnish” (pour faire vernys jaulne) [fol. 74v]. The verb is also borrowed by counter-proofing and painting recipes to refer to undesired yellowing effects [fols. 51r, 57v–58r]. Although the yellowing does not necessarily occur as a result of oil use in these recipes, oil is nonetheless present as an ingredient. In another entry on raising silkworms, the author-practitioner writes about the color of silk: “Some worms make it whiter, others more yellowish [jaunastre]. And even if it may be white, it yellows [elle se jaulnist] when one draws it with hot water” [fol. 53v]. While using the adjectival “yellowish” (jaunastre) to describe the color given by silkworms, he chooses the reflexive verb “se jaunir” to differentiate the color transformation that occurs in silk under heat. The author-practitioner’s use of jaulnir at the intersection of oil and heat calls to mind the production of the choleric humor, yellow bile, under excessive heat.
The author-practitioner applies rougir to a different, but equally specific set of processes. First, rougir refers to the ability of a material to resist transformation when subjected to heat, which is an important property in molds. The author-practitioner ascribes the ability to “withstand the fire,” at varying degrees, to plaster, feather alum, spat, and rust [fols. 106v, 107r, 119v, 132v]. According to him, such materials were resistant to burning, cracking and corrupting in fire: “it withstands the fire & reddens [se rougist] whenever need be, without corrupting” [fol. 119v]. He also characterizes materials like feather alum as being able to bestow these fire-resisting properties upon other materials like sand, which thereby allows sand to be used for making molds as well:
There can never be too much feather alum, for this is what gives bond to the sand, and because it does not burn, it makes sand withstand the fire without cracking & bursting. Otherwise, without it, the sand would not withstand it. [fol. 107r]
In other words, rougir (or se rougir) embodies a material’s response to the transformation that heat attempts to enact upon it – it counteracts heat by reddening itself, and then reverts back to its original complexion when redness “dies down.”
In addition, the ability to perform rougir under fire without being altered itself, renders the material a suitable vessel of fire’s transformative power. According to the author-practitioner, crocum ferri (rusted metal filings) can allow sand to be used in casting metals, because it acquires heat from fire and then “receives it [sand] & holds it within its warmth” [fol. 106v]. Many recipes advise the use of reddened shovels, iron blades and plates to store and disseminate heat over a long period: “Put under your crucible a thick iron slab, which will redden [rougira] & will maintain the heat under your crucible” [fol. 82v; see also 92v, 110v, 151v, 161v]. Charcoal reddens under heat and can be used to subsequently redden casting frames [fol. 132r]. Iron filings, when reddened in fire, may furthermore acquire the abilities of fire, and subsequently become capable of burning away impurities in themselves: “Because usually filings are mixed with filth, it is good to redden them [la rougir] in the fire to burn the impurities and then wash them in clear water” [fol. 143v].
The grammatical play on color terminology provides the author-practitioner with the linguistic tools to differentiate between the different uses of a given material in a recipe. Only the noun rouge, and not the verb rougir, is used in the aforementioned recipe for softening iron, because the act of heating intends to transform the iron, such that it may be “very soft for engraving on it well whatever you want” [fol. 149r]. However, the author-practitioner applies rougir when iron, in the form of an iron slab, is not the intended object of transformation, but is functioning as a mediator of heat in the other recipe for casting in bronze [fol. 82v]. In a different context of making iron filings rust, he writes:
That which is rusty by itself, being showered with salt water or vinegar or urine and then very dried out and reddened in the fire, is very red ground on porphyry and is of the color of Levant bole, & approaching minium. [fol. 163v]
He adds “and reddened in the fire” (“et rougy au feu”) as an afterthought in the margin to refer to the step of heating iron filings to remove its impurities, while the following noun “red” (rouge) refers to the process of rusting. By employing verbs like rougir and jaulnir to describe artisanal procedures, the author-practitioner directs the reader’s attention towards the relative function materials perform in the artisanal process at hand. The possibility of rendering colors into verbs to spotlight process and relative application, over intrinsic properties or observational outcomes, offers a hint of the rich linguistic resources that were available to the sixteenth-century artisan.
Whether rougir, jaulner, colorer or dorer, the verbs in the author-practitioner’s lexicon allowed him to convey an impressive level of technical detail in the written word. Thus, artisanal practices were far from ineffable – it is only that the subtleties of the artisanal lexicon easily escape the attention of the general reader, just as these usages do not make their way into contemporary popular dictionaries. This suggests that specialized semantic fields existed and were possibly transmitted alongside fields of artisanal knowledge. Although these verbs may indeed be “polysemic concepts” – as Jenny Boulboullé and Maartje Stols-Witlox have found with the term “corps” – in that their diverse applications could not be sufficiently captured by a single definition, yet each verb does, nonetheless, carry a specified set of technical and tacit instructions.25
The Role of Color in the Construction of Material Networks
In addition to these specialized technical applications of rougir, it also leaves a more ambiguous trail through the manuscript. The author-practitioner projects this term beyond metalwork recipes and onto a few seemingly outlying contexts, including Cardona salt, which is used to make “very good vinegar” [fol. 40r], and crayfish, to make it seem boiled when it is still alive [fol. 130r]. Tracing how the author-practitioner transplants color terminology out of its usual context, can further complicate the way in which we may be inclined to categorize the domains of craft and knowledge in Ms. Fr. 640.26
Rusting is an interesting process to consider at the intersection between rougir and the color red. The production of crocum ferri – by making iron filings rust with vinegar and heat – involves both performing rougir in the author-practitioner’s conventional sense (i.e., heating iron filings to burn away the impurities in it) and the creation of an optical result of redness (“rougeur”) from rust [fol. 161v]. As the humor blood was classified as wet and hot and was associated with the element air, vinegar, considered dry and cold, was a common fumigant used to counteract threatening airborne forces generated by blood.27 Yet in Ms. Fr. 640, the author-practitioner counterintuitively associates both redness and reddening with the formation of vinegar, writing that “very good vinegar” is made by making Cardona salt “redden” (“faisant rougir”) in heat, before “throwing it all red or quite hot into wine” [fol. 40r].28 As vinegar functions in Ms. Fr. 640 as an important agent in generating redness (i.e., rust) on metals, the author-practitioner reassigns this material to the linguistic sphere of generating, instead of counteracting, redness. He mobilizes the language of redness to emphasize the chain of interrelations between vinegar, rust, and metal casting. While drawing on established systems of physiological knowledge that surely resonated with himself and his audience, he is not confined by its metaphorical parameters. His use of the color red did not adhere strictly to either humoral theory or optical observation, but was conditioned by his familiarity with the material process.
The author-practitioner introduces his reader to a material imaginary in which the connections between metals, fire, rust, vinegar, wine and crayfish were forged around the color red. According to him, the powerful transformative force of the red color that generates “very good vinegar” feeds into the rust of crocum ferri, which thereby enhances the ability of the mold produced from it to redden and withstand fire during the casting process. Therefore, the author-practitioner states that, “The one [mold] of steel fillings & needles is redder & better” [fol. 132v]. In this statement, he conveys a material imaginary in which strength is associated with the intensity of the red color – this understanding of strength could be projected over the materials and processes described here, because of the networks that linked them across the dimension of color.
The manuscript includes an odd recipe “for reddening [rougir] live crayfish, which will seem boiled”: “Rub them in quite good vinegar in which there should be a little eau-de-vie & hardly any, & they can be served as cooked & will move around” [fol. 130r]. In light of the function of colors as the pivots of material networks in Ms. Fr. 640, the relevance of this recipe to the manuscript’s scope becomes clearer. The instruction to rub crayfish “in quite good vinegar” recalls the previous recipe on vinegar, tapping into the material imaginary of the red color to conjure connections to the cooking of food in the human stomach, the process which gives rise to blood. According to the author-practitioner’s understanding, the effectiveness of this recipe at imitating the “cooking” process in the human body seems to justify its ability to deceive. Revealingly, he applies the term rougir to this recipe, which involves neither heat nor metals. Yet the reddening of crayfish by vinegar draws a wealth of connections to the metal casting process; and indeed, the manuscript includes many recipes for casting crayfish to experiment with nature’s transformations [e.g. fol. 141r–142r].29 The use of colors in the active form serves as a powerful thread weaving together the scattered pages of the manuscript. It allows the author-practitioner to map the interrelationships between materials, extrapolating from familiar characteristics and processes to more effectively communicate his material imaginary to the reader.
Conclusion
The author-practitioner of Ms. Fr. 640 may sometimes use the language of color as a lens to sharpen his account of procedural technicalities in writing. At other times, this language performs an opposite role, conceptually stretching and integrating discrete recipes into an abstract material imaginary that is anchored in colors. Color offers a convenient epistemological platform, on which the author-practitioner’s complex perceptions of visual and material change converged and could be organized into a systematic way of conceptualizing and transmitting artisanal knowledge in the workshop and beyond.
Within the semantic world of the manuscript, verbs, which were derived from colors, serve to foreground artisanal processes. In other words, actions like rougir or jaulnir are not intrinsically attached to any agent, human or non-human, nor any predetermined visual or material outcome. The very nature of the artisanal process cuts across such distinctions. Instead, these verbs allude to the forces of transformation that are associated with its color, whether that be the power of fire to animate the body, or that of oil and excessive heat to corrupt it. The author-practitioner could flexibly mobilize these formulas of transformation to convey his own desired instructions.
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Kirby, Jo, and Marika Spring. “Ms. Fr. 640 in the World of Pigments in Sixteenth-Century Europe.” In Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, edited by Making and Knowing Project, Pamela H. Smith, Naomi Rosenkranz, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Tillmann Taape, Clément Godbarge, Sophie Pitman, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel Klein, Donna Bilak, Marc Smith, and Terry Catapano. New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_321_ie_19.
Lemnius, Levinus. The Touchstone of Complexions. Generallye Appliable, Expedient and Profitable for All Such, as Be Desirous & Carefull of Their Bodylye Health. Translated by Thomas Newton. London, 1576.
Lindemann, Mary. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. New Approaches to European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Mayerne, Théodore Turquet de. Sir Theodore de Mayerne, Pictoria, Sculptoria et Quae Subalternarum Artium. British Library Digitised Manuscripts, Sloane Ms. 2052, 1620. https://artechne.hum.uu.nl/node/94995.
Ndungu, Njeri. “What is Or Mat in Ms. Fr. 640?” In Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, edited by Making and Knowing Project, Pamela H. Smith, Naomi Rosenkranz, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Tillmann Taape, Clément Godbarge, Sophie Pitman, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel Klein, Donna Bilak, Marc Smith, and Terry Catapano. New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_041_sp_16.
Ranconnet, Aimar de, Hadrianus Junius, and Jean Masset. Thresor de La Langue Francoyse Tant Ancienne Que Moderne. Paris: David Douceur, 1606. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k50808z.
Sammern, Romana. “Red, White and Black: Colors of Beauty, Tints of Health and Cosmetic Materials in Early Modern English Art Writing.” In Early Modern Color Worlds, edited by Tawrin Baker, Sven Dupré, Sachiko Kusukawa, and Karin Leonhard. Leiden: Brill, 2015. https://brill.com/view/title/33093.
Smith, Pamela H. From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226818238.001.
Smith, Pamela H. “Lifecasting in Ms. Fr. 640.” In Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, edited by Making and Knowing Project, Pamela H. Smith, Naomi Rosenkranz, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Tillmann Taape, Clément Godbarge, Sophie Pitman, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel Klein, Donna Bilak, Marc Smith, and Terry Catapano. New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_511_ad_20.
Sparey, Victoria. “Performing Puberty: Fertile Complexions in Shakespeare’s Plays.” Shakespeare Bulletin 33, no. 3 (September 2015): 441–67. https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2015.0041.
The Making and Knowing Project. “Entry Categories.” In Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, edited by Making and Knowing Project, Pamela H. Smith, Naomi Rosenkranz, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Tillmann Taape, Clément Godbarge, Sophie Pitman, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel Klein, Donna Bilak, Marc Smith, and Terry Catapano. New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/content/resources.
There are multiple hands in Ms. Fr. 640; by “author-practitioner,” I am referring to the main hand in which 95% of the manuscript is written. ↩︎
Ms. Fr. 640 demonstrates a greater interest in the decorative crafts than other comparable manuscripts. Jo Kirby and Marika Spring, “Ms. Fr. 640 in the World of Pigments in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” in Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, ed. Making and Knowing Project, et al. (New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020), https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_321_ie_19. ↩︎
Tawrin Baker et al., eds., Early Modern Color Worlds (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 3, 14, https://brill.com/view/title/33093. ↩︎
Njeri Ndungu, “What Is Or Mat in Ms. Fr. 640?,” in Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, ed. Making and Knowing Project, et al. (New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020), https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_041_sp_16. ↩︎
Jenny Boulboullé and Maartje Stols-Witlox, “Working (with) the Corps: The Body of Sands, Colors, and Varnishes in Ms. Fr. 640,” in Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, ed. Making and Knowing Project, et al. (New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020), https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_307_ie_19. ↩︎
Pamela H. Smith, From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2022), 226, https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226818238.001. ↩︎
Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2021), 426–29, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003196662. ↩︎
I borrow the phrase “material imaginary” from Smith, From Lived Experience to the Written Word, 41, referring to a worldview in which materials generate meaning through their use. ↩︎
Dictionnaire Du Moyen Français (1330-1500), Version 2023 (ATILF - CNRS & Université de Lorraine), http://zeus.atilf.fr/dmf/. ↩︎
Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1611), http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cotgrave. ↩︎
Aimar de Ranconnet, Hadrianus Junius, and Jean Masset, Thresor de La Langue Francoyse Tant Ancienne Que Moderne (Paris: David Douceur, 1606), 574, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k50808z. ↩︎
Noga Arikha, Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, 1st ed (New York, NY: Ecco, 2007), 67, 216; Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, New Approaches to European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 15–17. ↩︎
Romana Sammern, “Red, White and Black: Colors of Beauty, Tints of Health and Cosmetic Materials in Early Modern English Art Writing,” in Early Modern Color Worlds, ed. Tawrin Baker et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 122, https://brill.com/view/title/33093. ↩︎
Arikha, Passions and Tempers, 10. ↩︎
Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 15–17. ↩︎
Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck, eds., Histories of Scientific Observation (Chicago ; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011); Baker et al., Early Modern Color Worlds, 1–3. ↩︎
Levinus Lemnius, The Touchstone of Complexions. Generallye Appliable, Expedient and Profitable for All Such, as Be Desirous & Carefull of Their Bodylye Health., trans. Thomas Newton (London, 1576), 90. ↩︎
Victoria Sparey, “Performing Puberty: Fertile Complexions in Shakespeare’s Plays,” Shakespeare Bulletin 33, no. 3 (September 2015): 45, https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2015.0041. ↩︎
Sparey, 461. ↩︎
Théodore Turquet de Mayerne, Sir Theodore de Mayerne, Pictoria, Sculptoria et Quae Subalternarum Artium, British Library Digitised Manuscripts, Sloane Ms. 2052, 1620, fols. 92r, 111r, 122r, 161v, https://artechne.hum.uu.nl/node/94995. ↩︎
See Boulboullé and Stols-Witlox, “Working (with) the Corps.” ↩︎
Arikha, Passions and Tempers, 58. ↩︎
Emphasis mine. Robert Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours First Occasionally Written, among Some Other Essays to a Friend, and Now Suffer’d to Come Abroad as the Beginning of an Experimental History of Colours (London, 1664), 7–8. ↩︎
For more on what is the “body” (corps) of colors, see Boulboullé and Stols-Witlox, “Working (with) the Corps.” ↩︎
Boulboullé and Stols-Witlox. ↩︎
See The Making and Knowing Project, “Entry Categories,” in Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, ed. Making and Knowing Project, et al. (New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020), https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/content/resources. ↩︎
Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 64. ↩︎
The Digital Edition translates “faisant rougir” as “heating red-hot,” but it is important to note that this is a causative construction with the verb rougir, which translates literally as, “making redden.” ↩︎
Pamela H. Smith, “Lifecasting in Ms. Fr. 640,” in Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, ed. Making and Knowing Project, et al. (New York: Making and Knowing Project, 2020), https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_511_ad_20. ↩︎