Reddit reviews On Divers Arts (Dover Art Instruction)

You've made a beginner's mistake in assuming that dark = black. It is the other way around. Black is a dark color but it is only one of many. Many beginners use black to induce shadow (and produce light), but in earnest black and white are less useful for the final color composition. For some classical reference: On Divers Arts (amazon link), provides a very interesting set of instructions on the painting of flesh tones from 1122. Still, you likely won't get the best instructions from a 900 year old manual. Color (amazon link) is a great (really great) introduction to color theory.

As for composition, it mostly works in my opinion though I might suggest that the leaf under the eye on the right distracts from the eye itself. Furthermore, the clarity of the leaves and eyes causes the abstract shapes cutting through the painting to be called into question by their unspecific nature. Thereby, there are elements within the painting that are extremely specific and others that do not have purpose past compositional fixes. These 'edges' appear as though chrome and serve to transition and conjoin the disjointed elements within your piece and I might add have a flair for the surreal. I can only suggest that this comes off more as an ends to a means rather than as careful and pointed. Take the 'transition' away and your problem still remains, see what I mean?

Regards,
D

One of our earliest sources for this sort of thing is a books entitled On Divers Arts by a Benedictine monk named Theophilus. You can find a modern translation here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Divers-Arts-Theophilus/dp/0486237842/

A more archaic translation, with the original Latin text is here: http://books.google.com/books?id=wo4EAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22An%20Essay%20upon%20Various%20Arts%20in%20three%20Books%22&lr&as_brr=1&client=firefox-a&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q&f=false

The short answer, is that bronze gears for clocks, at least in the 12th century, seem to have been largely hand-cut using a hardened steel file, a process that was ridiculously time-consuming, as you might imagine. I think other techniques using a gauge-plate were in existence by the 17th century, though.

Ok, in addition to the paper/booklet posted earlier from acedemia.edu about the lorica segmentata here are some other resources discussing armor and some on metal work techniques. Much of what is available is medieval period but many of the skills and techniques are similar.
On Divers Arts by Theophilus is a treatise on painting, glass making, and metalwork from roughly 1122ad. ISBN:978-0486237848

De Re Metalica by Georgius Agricola is a scientific book on mining and metallurgy from around 1556ad. ISBN: 978-0486600062

The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio is a treatise on metallurgy and alchemy/chemistry from 1540ad. ISBN:978-0486261348

Techniques of Medieval Armor Reproduction: The Fourteenth Century is an awesome book covering various metalwork techniques as applied to making 14th century armor. ISBN: 978-1581605365 He talks about tools you will need and some modifications to make to them for ease of use. He even gives you some ideas on finding good sources for drawing inspiration from for your armor patterns. If you are starting with making armor and don't have anyone nearby to help you learn this is a good guide to buy.

Best of the Hammer is a black and white series of booklets that have great info on medieval metalwork from chainmail to bladesmithing. ISBN:978-0943228044

Roman Body Armor, by Hilary & John Travis is a good re-examining of the data on Roman armor up until this point. ISBN: 978-1445608037

Did you know that the Spanish Inquisition, for instance, wasn't established until the tail end of the 15th century? Did you know that traditionally the "Dark Ages" when referenced ends by the mid-Medieval Era (~1000AD) and the Medieval Era as a whole ends traditionally in the late 14th century? That's a 100-500 year margin of error we're talking about here. The big religious wars occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries with the Protestant Revolution and the 30 Years' War.

With that said, I'm going to quote an old post I made on this to tackle another few topics that haven't really been addressed yet:

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The Italian Renaissance was about 100% cultural. Yes, technological advances came from it but it wasn't because of some 'rediscovery' of former painting, sculpting, mosaics, etc. Ironically enough, many of the architectural practices they returned to because of their fascination with Romans and Greeks were inferior to Medieval architectural methods.

I mean seriously, go look at some Medieval Cathedrals sometime. Did you know that they weren't just dark and gloomy? They were actually beautiful and colorful. With modern science we can analyze the microscopic paint chips that remain on these things and see what color they were actually painted back in the day and these towering cathedrals turned out to be painted fantastical colors of bright blues, bright oranges, bright reds and yellows. I've seen pictures of recreations of this from what's called light mapping -- basically using a projection of light to recreate color -- and it's absolutely stunning. These were not places of oppression and despair but livelihood and awe and wanderlust. This is what the inside of one of these Cathedrals looks like. Now imagine all that painted vibrant colors. I wish I had a higher resolution but just look at this beauty.

Nonetheless, the idea that the Greeks or Romans were any "more scientific" than Europe in the Middle Ages is just laughable, no offense. It's a hard thing to deal with that science, as a practice, is a modern phenomena. Another issue with this line of thought is that it treats technological change like a game of Civilization. Real life doesn't have a tech tree. Technology adapts as the needs of the people change. The Romans had hegemony over most of the Mediterranean, were massively agricultural, and had an enormous slave population. So a lot of potential output a lot of land to cover. Thus, they invented things like the aqueduct to transport lots of water across large parts of the Empire and refined ideas like roads to assist travel across their holdings.

The needs of the people in the Medieval Era were different. They by and large did not have huge empires. They also did not have huge slave populations and without a large empire holding formerly inarable lands together with imported foodstuffs, the now artificially large populations began to suffer without sufficient agricultural production. So things like the heavy plough were invented, so that the rough lands of the North could be worked. But horses choke themselves to death with the plough, and their hooves are not good for working the rocky lands. Thus the horse collar and the horseshoe were created. With lower populations contributing, things like the mill (which did formerly exist, but in rudimentary fashions) were refined to automatically hammer metal, churn butter, and grind grain and save labor. I can do this all day.

If you want a really good book that you can pick up for $1.50, On Divers Arts is a translated almanac of sorts from the 12th century on painting, metallurgy, glasswork, and carpentry. It will show you just how clever and intelligent these people really were.

A dark age is a real thing. It's a period of time where we have next to no or absolutely no primary sources from the period or even writing about said period. One such example is the end of the Bronze Age, or more commonly known as the "Bronze Aze collapse". We have no idea what happened, like, at all. There are a lot of theories, there is evidence for a lot of things, but we simply don't know. All we know is that a bunch of prosperous Mediterranean nations suddenly (as in, a few decades) were wiped off the face of the Earth, starting from the Northwest and working its way across and even into Palestine. The only surviving nation was Egypt where we only have a small amount of writing from this event.

There were also the Greek Dark Ages, which happened around the time of the former but was more severe from around 1100 to 800 BC. To quote wikipedia:

> With the collapse of the palatial centres, no more monumental stone buildings were built and the practice of wall painting may have ceased; writing in the Linear B script ceased, vital trade links were lost, and towns and villages were abandoned. The population of Greece was reduced,[5] and the world of organized state armies, kings, officials, and redistributive systems disappeared.

What happened in the Medieval Era was not that. It's not even close to either of those. The term dark age referring to the Middle Ages comes from the monumental loser and tragic genius named Petrarch. Petrarch was a monk in the 14th century, during the bubonic plague as you might also know. Basically, Petrarch was a fucking prodigy. He knew a crap ton of languages and basically read every single book out there. A lot of which were saved texts from the Greeks and Romans.

You know how your grandma always talks about how it was better back in her day? Well imagine that x100. It wasn't actually better back then, it's just nostalgia and selective thinking makes her think like that. That's what happened with Petrarch and his reading. Now combine that with the fact he lived during the most destructive disease in world history, watching nearly all of Europe get obliterated by this scourge and I think you're starting to put two and two together here. Petrarch saw the end of the bubonic plague, and saw the writings of the Greeks and Romans and thought "Man, everything much have been so much better back then! Truly we are leaving this era of darkness."

That isn't a direct quote, obviously, but the "era of darkness" is roughly a real thing he said. He had a skewed vision, and his writings lived on. Combine this with the fact that until about the mid 19th century or so we had very little primary sources of the Medieval Era (like, an actual dark age!) and Petrarch calling it an "era of darkness" and all the death that came from the Plague and I think you can see where this myth originates from.