And here's why...
How many times have we drawn up a design for a reproduction piece or medieval inspired work and found that it just doesn't look quite right? You rework it and rework it, but it just never looks the same as the image that your copying. This can be attributed to two things.
Firstly, personal style does come into play. Our muscle memory as artists means we have practised drawing the human figure possibly more than anything else and we have done so in a specific way. Our contemporary style may not mesh with that of the artists of the Middle Ages. It could be you have a scratchy graphic sketching style or maybe it's differing proportions, but like any habit, this is hard to break.
Secondly and possibly more importantly, the modern eye does not replicate form in the same style as the Medieval and Renaissance masters. Now of course, our eyes do technically see the same, however if we simply look at a period piece and try to replicate it from eye, it will always be slightly different or disproportional.
This is because in contemporary art practice we use different techniques in order to gain realistic proportion and we will usually adjust our drawings automatically to look more lifelike. Although during the 15th century artists sought to gain a sense of verisimilitude in their works, capturing a good sense of realism, even down to including the seam lines in garments, they had not yet gained the knowledge and tools to practise perfect perspective. This would come into play in the 16th century during the Italian Renaissance when mathematical knowledge would come back to Europe through trade with the Middle East, however in the era of Van Eyck and van der Weyden perspective and proportion were captured by eye. This is most apparent in architectural landscape and also in the proportion of figures. Many of the human subjects always seem to have legs for miles and many have very similar yet distinct facial features, being slightly more rounded than the style currently in vogue in contemporary art. So although we intend to copy a piece closely, if we attempt this by eye, we will inevitably change features that make the design look authentic.
However, when it comes to tracing in order to get a perfect reproduction you should remember, they did it in period! In Cennino D' Andrea Cennini's manual Il Libro dell' Arte (The Craftsman's Handbook), written in the late 14th / early 15th Century, there is a guide for the construction and use of tracing paper to copy scenes of fragments for reproduction. These chapters are as follow...
A free version of Il Libro dell' Arte can be found at http://www.noteaccess.com/Texts/Cennini/
"How you May Obtain the Essence of a Good Figure or Drawing with Tracing Paper.
Chapter XXIII
You should be aware that there is also a paper known as tracing paper which may be very useful to you. To copy a head, or a figure, or a half figure, as you find it attractive, by the hand of the great masters, and to get the outlines right, from paper, panel, or wall, which you want to take right off, put this tracing paper over the figure or drawing, fastening it nicely at the four corners with a little red or green wax. Because of the transparency of the tracing paper, the figure or drawing underneath immediately shows through, in such shape and manner that you see it clearly. Then take either a pen cut quite fine or a fine brush of fine minever; and you may proceed to pick out with ink the outlines and accents of the drawing underneath; and in general to touch in shadows as far as you can see to do it. And then, lifting off the paper, you may touch it up with any high lights and reliefs, as you please.
The First Way to Learn How to Make a Clear Tracing Paper.
Chapter XXIIII
If you do not find any ready-made, you will need to make some of this tracing paper in this way. Take a kid parchment and give it to a parchment worker; and have it scraped so much that it barely holds together. And have him take care to scrape it evenly. It is transparent of itself. If you want it more transparent, take some clear and fine linseed oil; and smear it with some of this oil on a piece of cotton. Let it dry thoroughly, for the space of several days; and it will be perfect and good. [p. 13]
A Second Way to Make Tracing Paper: With Glue.
Chapter XXV
If you want to make this tracing paper in another way, take a good smooth slab of marble or porphyry. Then get some fish glue and some leaf glue, which the druggists sell. Put them to soak in clear water, and arrange to have one porringerful of clear water to six leaves. Then boil it until it is all melted, and after boiling strain it two or three times. Then take this size, all strained, melted, and warm, and a brush; and lay it on these slabs just the way you tint tinted papers. The slabs must be clean; and they should be greased with olive oil previously. And when this size which is laid on them has dried, take the point of a penknife, and start to pry this size far enough away from the slab here and there for you to get a grip on the skin or paper thus formed. And work cautiously, so as to pry this skin off the slab in the form of a paper, without damaging it. And if you want to find this skin or paper [more durable][17] before you pry it off the slab, take some linseed oil, boiled the way I shall teach you for mordants; and with a soft brush lay a coat of it all over. And let it dry for two or three days, and it will be good tracing paper.
How to make Tracing Paper out of Paper.
Chapter XXVI
This same tracing paper which we have been discussing may be made out of paper, the paper, to begin with, being made very thin, smooth, and quite white. Then grease this paper with linseed oil, as described above. It becomes transparent, and it is good.
How you Should Endeavor to Copy and Draw After as Few masters as Possible
Chapter XXVII
Now you must forge ahead again, so that you may pursue the course of this theory. You have made your tinted papers; the next thing is to draw. You should adopt this method. Having first practiced [p. 14] drawing for a while as I have taught you above, that is, on a little panel, take pains and pleasure in constantly copying the best things which you can find done by the hand of great masters. And if you are in a place where many good masters have been, so much the better for you. But I give you this advice: take care to select the best one every time, and the one who has the greatest reputation. And, as you go on from day to day, it will be against nature if you do not get some grasp of his style and of his spirit. For if you undertake to copy after one master today and after another one tomorrow, you will not acquire the style of either one or the other, and you will inevitably, through enthusiasm, become capricious, because each style will be distracting your mind. You will try to work in this man's way today, and in the other's tomorrow, and so you will not get either of them right. If you follow the course of one man through constant practice, your intelligence would have to be crude indeed for you not to get some nourishment from it. Then you will find, if nature has granted you any imagination at all, that you will eventually acquire a style individual to yourself, and it cannot help being good; because your hand and your mind, being always accustomed to gather flowers, would ill know how to pluck thorns."
- C. Cennini, D.V. Thompson, The Craftsman’s Handbook;“Ïl Libro dell’Arte”
As a practical example I have based a few reproductions on this version of St. Michael in Rogier van der Weyden's Last Judgement Tryptych, in its closed position. I love his serenity and the graceful pose. I have painted colour versions of this particular St. Michael in two projects, once from eye and once by taking a tracing.
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Last Judgement Triptych (closed) ((detail))
Hans Memling
1467-71
National Museum of Gdansk
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Below are my two attempts. The right side is a colour sketch that I took from eye, the left a basic traced framework for transferring later. The proportions of the trace are far closer than my first attempt. As you can see, I have shortened his legs and narrowed the face slightly almost automatically even though I was attempting to copy the image exactly.
When taking a trace of a well shaded piece, it is advisable to not only trace the details, but also consider marking out the integral shading and shadows with a dotted line. This will assist in later stages of your reproduction as the lighting and shade of a form inevitably forms the three-dimensionality and appearance of that form.
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| Left: Tracing, Right: Sketched from eye |
From these two mock up sketches, I did two paintings of St. Michael. Again, the detail on the right was copied from eye both referring back to the original and the sketch I had done previously, and the figure on the left was painted using the tracing of St. Michael as the basic framework to start from and paint over.
Although neither is perfect, the rendition painted using the tracing is closer proportionally than the other. And although the version taken from a tracing began as a basic copy, it lends opportunity for originality and still requires the skills of colour, shade and tone in order to create a piece that is passable for the style of the Northern masters.
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| Painted St. Michael again attempted from eye. |
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| Pavise designed and prepped using the tracing taken from the original. |
Another perk of taking tracings of period art for modern projects is tracing paper allows you to easily reuse figures, reverse them and enlarge them for use in a range of projects. So always keep your tracings! You never know when you'll need them again.
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| Dyed Silk Banner; St. Michael design taken from the same tracing. |
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