[LUTE] Re: Laurent de La Hyre

[Anthony Hind]

Dear Jaroslaw
     It is good to be discussing again with you.
Le 22 févr. 09 à 18:16, Jarosław Lipski a écrit :
Dear Anthony,
I thought that lead is poisness, isn't it? Didn't they know about it?

I am sure they knew it was poisonous to eat, but may not have  
realized it was dangerous as a dye/loading through the skin.

Mimmo mentions several ancient recipes that could have been easily  
employed for ‘loading’ gut (Giovanventura Rossetti’s recipes for  
dyeing fabrics, silk and leather (Venezia, 1548):
"Some of these describe how to incorporate cinnabar (red mercury  
sulphide) or lithargyrum (yellow lead oxide) into wax, leather, silk,  
wood, hair, inks &c.: indeed, only a short step away from gut"

So if they dyed leather and silk with mercury, they would  probably  
not have worried lead or mercury on gut. Until very recently people  
used lead paint, even for babies high chairs, and also lead pipes for  
drinking water. They also put mercury on the backs of mirrors.

Look how we have used asbestos, even when we knew how dangerous it was.

I even have some oil-bath caps and transformers on my amps (I am  
ashamed to say), although, I know it could be dangerous (pyrolene),  
but I foolishly like the sound.

I don't know whether any lutensists had symptoms of saturnism?

The other basses are neither brown nor red. Maybe it's a matter of  
light, but they really look like copper wounds.
Lead tri oxide or lead-dioxide could perhaps give such a colour?
http://www.aquilacorde.com/pigmenti.JPG

Compare with the theorbo strings

   http://tinyurl.com/conmfc


Mine are browner, or more purple,  It is true
http://tinyurl.com/burdjo

Perhaps, we may discover they did have early wirewounds, but if so,  
the overall coppery colour would indicate complete wire wounds, not  
demifilé, and there are absolutely no mention even in Playford of  
that. The colour of the full-wire wound is not quite as in the de La  
Hyre painting above, but copper does vary in colour.
http://www.aquilacorde.com/close.JPG

But it is a painting, so perhaps the colour is not completely  
accurate. It is true that my loaded (see above) are red-brown, or  
purpley-brown.

If really loading not dyeing was involved maybe they had some local  
recepies giving in the end this color?

Well there are those questions concerning the thickness of the 5c and  
6c strings, which Mimmo thinks does point to loading, if the painting  
is accurate.
6c being the same thickness as the 5c, if I remember, when it should  
be thicker, could imply a densified (loaded, or wound) string.

There is one other thing, I think it is possible to load directly  
with an Oxide, but the result is less heavy.
The resulting string might be x 1,5 more heavy than pure gut (I don't  
quite remember), and not the desired x2.

The result however, could be much brighter, I imagine, like dyed  
leather.

However, there is no way any final conclusions can be made, just very  
interesting hypotheses.

Best wishes
Anthony




Regards
Jaroslaw


Special loaded? We know nothing about white loading.
However, Mimmo has told me of one possibility, lead carbonate is a
white  and very dense insoluble powder, which was largely employed in
the past under the name Biacca, or Basic lead carbonate. It was the
only white insoluble pigment of the past. The density is arround 7,0.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonato_di_piombo

Another problem for the pure gut hypothesis, according to Mimmo, is
that sulfur treatment, which make strings whiter, seems not to have
been in use  on gut strings, before mid 17th c. Such thickness of gut
string, Mimmo tells me should be brownish. So perhaps lead carbonate
is the answer.

Place maker? Possible, however people that like this sort of  
things usualy make more than one - like the dots on the neck's side.
Plain thicker gut? Could be, although this wouldn't be my choice  
as mentioned before.
Artistic implication? This one I rather exclude. The allegory is   
made by juxtaposing some objects, however it doesn't mean they   
wouldn't be painted faithfully. For example La Hyre juxtaposed  
the  singing bird sitting on the back of the chair symbolising the  
"free  music" and the theorbo player as a
(probably a rossignol)
symbol of the "learned music". However both are painted faithfuly  
I believe. In general La Hyre was very acurate in portrait- 
painting  so it would be rather strange if he made an exception  
and didn't  pay any attention to the details this time.
Yes, when I looked in bigger magnification, I was also struck by the
details, as also pointed out by Dana.
So my guess is, it could be some kind of a temporary substitute.
That or  possibly lead carbonate because as Mimmo seems to think,
plain gut would possibly not have been white.

Thank you, Jaroslaw, for this very interesting example.
Regards
Anthony

Regards
Jaroslaw

----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Hind"   
<anthony.h...@noos.fr>
To: "Jarosław Lipski" <jaroslawlip...@wp.pl>; "lute List"  
<lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 4:49 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Laurent de La Hyre


        It's good to read you again, Jarosław, and with such an
interesting example.

I would not presume to give any answers, just add a question or two.
It would be good to have Mimmo's specialist opinion, on this.

Aesthetic/loaded?
      I note that MP does give two examples contrasting aesthetic
use of string colour,
with something more systematic that he thinks could be consistent
with loading:
aesthetic (Ludovico Lana 1597-1646):
http://www.aquilacorde.com/valeriani1.JPG
red basses: they suggest a loading treatment
http://www.aquilacorde.com/b.jpg

but your example is sort of in between, interpretable either way?
unless there is a technical reason (string length) which would
preclude loading?

Demi-filé?
   However, if the date is 1649, it seems unlikely that the white
string could have been "silver wound" demi-filé, because of the  
early
date.
Mimmo's example is from 1770:
Zophany, 1770 ca. The Sharp family: see the white basses
http://www.aquilacorde.com/zophany.jpg

If for a specific purpose, why substitute for 7c and not also for 6c?
I think your suggestion that
2/ La Hyre painted what he saw at that given moment - the white 7th
   string was put on after the original proper (loaded?) string   
had broken
   3/ 7th string was made of some kind of substitute which the  
player
   consciously preferred to have on that course.


are quite plausible (both possibilities);  but if (3) and 7c was a
preferred substitute, why was it not also preferred for 6c, which
remains red (loaded?), unless 7c were a special type of loaded (but I
might be missing something here about the reentrant tuning).

Indeed, on my new 11c lute, Stephen Gottlieb did not put the full
complement of loaded basses (from 6 to 11), instead he stopped at 8c,
and substituted for the smaller basses : a Gimped on 7c and a pure
Venice on 6c (probably just because he already had them), but also
because he said they would be more frequently stopped down.

Place marker?
The gimped string, while good, did break the smooth transition of the
voices, but proved quite useful while I was learning to use the
basses, as a sort of place marker: I could both see and hear where I
was.
Although, I would not actually like to suggest a similar "place
marker role" for the white string in this painting.

I agree it is most likely a temporary substitute (as mine in fact
were also), just possibly there for its preferred quality, if it was
a special loaded string.

Loaded?
Could this white string have been a loaded one?

Notice, that my Venice 6c was yellowish, but it looks quite white in
contrast to the redder basses, and this is a painting, so the
difference could be exaggerated:
http://tinyurl.com/burdjo

Could the 7c of this painting be the canary-yellow lead oxide MP
mentions, if it was there for a specific purpose (Mimmo doesn't
mention any white coloured loading)? I suppose it is more likely to
be plain gut, but that is also usually yellowish, unless bleached.

Some artistic implication?
Although, the instrument could perhaps be an artist's prop, for
which the strings could have been chosen for some particlular
artistic effect, somehow part of its allegoric message. The white
string runs through the heart of the rose. The index (trigger finger)
is on this. If so, I have no idea what the implication for the artist
might be.

However, a painting with a primary allegorical message, could be a
little less safe in terms of the data it gives us for an actual
playing set-up, than say, the protrait of a particular lutenist (even
if this might also have some allegorical undertones).
Just my uninformed musings
regards
Anthony


   [1]http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/god4/ho_50.189.htm#  or
   [2]http://tinyurl.com/conmfc  . I wouldn't like however focus on
   toyness theme, which is very interesting btw, in spite we  
don't possess
   enough data to solve it now. What drew my attention when I saw it
   however (which is unfortunately not so visible on   
reproductions) were
   some small details. The whole painting is quite big 105.7 x    
144.1 cm
   with fast colors and sharp contours so there can't be any   
ambiguity
   about it. Apart from slightly strange, flat bottom end, what    
makes one
   wonder is the stringing. The string color is very consistent    
from the
   bridge to the peg box (even the loose ends inside the peg  
box   are of
   the same color so it can't be accidental). When you enter  
the   hall and
   see the picture you have an impression that the theorbo is    
strung with
   copper wounds. Well, I am not suggesting it really was, but   
the  tone
   color of the bass strings resembles copper quite a lot. There is
   another surprise: strings 1-5 look like ordinary gut, then 6th is
   copper-like, 7th (here, here) almost white (!) resembling   
silver wound,
   and 8-13 again copper color. Okay, so let's assume they were    
loaded,
   but then why the player wasn't consistent in the choice of    
basses? If
   they weren't wound or loaded so what are the other    
possibilities? Dyed?
   Maybe, but another interesting feature of the strings is the   
way they
   look at the bridge - the knots are tight (unusual for thick   
gut) so
   they had to be pretty elastic (low tension?).
   Then, obviously the painting process comes to mind which very   
often
   played the role of photography. La Hyre was known in Paris as  
a painter
   of a great number of portraits especially those of the principal
   dignitaries of the municipality and was called by Richelieu to  
the
   Palais Royal. In short we can rely on his paintings as a  
good   source of
   information.
   So we are probably left with 3 possibilities:
   1/ basses were dyed and the player picked 7th course from   
different
   manufacture
   2/ La Hyre painted what he saw at that given moment - the  
white  7th
   string was put on after the original proper (loaded?) string   
had broken
   3/ 7th string was made of some kind of substitute which the  
player
   consciously preferred to have on that course.
   Actually, 1 and 2 are most probable IMHO, however    
inconsistencies in
   string coloration can be found on paintings of some other    
masters as
   well.

   Any other ideas?



   Best

   Jaroslaw

   --

References

   1. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/god4/ho_50.189.htm
   2. http://tinyurl.com/conmfc


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