Page 287 - The Grotesque Children's Book

tincture and put into your glass reserved for that color. Keep your colors liquid
such that when you lift your squirrel from the glass, drops will be shed without
urging.

Care should be taken in the grinding and indeed applying of the colors for
as you are well aware, some of them are contained with although insubstantial
levels of arsenic, a prolonged intake of small doses can over time become lethal.

Translator’s Note. Squirrels. A squirrel means a painter’s brush made of
squirrel fur. A hawk is a kind of plasterer’s trowel. A muller is a glass handle
with a roundy bottom, sort of like a pestle, used for crushing raw pigments.
Master Leccare’s warning that “some” of the colors contain arsenic would not
have been so maddening to a Renaissance frescoist as it is to us. In their day,
they would have known that paint containing arsenic would have included
Realgar, orpiment, emerald green, and scheele's green.

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