Grundmässige kurtze und sehr deutliche Anweisung zum Mignatur-Mahlen.... In französicher Sprach von C. B.... ins Teutsch gebracht

Nuremberg: Christian Sigmund Froberg for Wolfgang Michahelles, 1710. 12mo (127 x 77 mm). [16], 145, [7] pp. Gothic types. Woodcut illustration of a pantograph (p. 8). Overall discoloration, some soiling and fraying to first and last few leaves. Contemporary speckled parchment over pasteboards (worn, covers bowed and darkened).***

A popular and now commensurately rare German translation of Claude Boutet's guide to miniature painting, the Traité de Miniature pour apprendre aisément à peindre sans maître (first published [as Escole de la Mignature] in Lyon, 1666). The translator was Gregor Andreas Schmidt, whose initials appear at the end of the dedication.

A bestseller in France, Boutet's work was translated successively into German (first 1688), Italian (1703) and English (1729). Boutet's goal in writing the work, he explains in the foreword, was to provide a guide for those lacking the opportunity for personal instruction in technical matters, such as nuns, or "persons of standing" who seek a pleasant diversion for their leisure hours. For the amateur, therefore, he lauds the superiority of miniature painting over other types, noting that it is far more delicate than regular painting, is to be viewed up close, and can only be executed on vellum or similar material. For those who cannot paint he provides instructions for scaling, including the fairly recently invented pantograph (illustrated though not named). The work contains detailed directions for preparing the pigments, color by color, and discussions of the brush, proper lighting, blending of paints and colors, painting techniques, and appropriate colors and techniques to use for backgrounds, day and night skies, clouds, halos and aureoles. Separate sections, subdivided into chapters, are devoted to the coloring and techniques for textiles and clothing, skin and various body parts, flames and smoke, landscapes, and flowers. The last, miscellaneous section contains various "secret" recipes for lacquers, gold and silver paint, purification of vermilion, etc.

The translator attempted to follow the French text closely, but his printers did not always cooperate: for example, in the foreword, in an allusion to painting treatises, "da Vinci [and] Fresnoy" have become a single writer-artist named "Vinci du Gresnoy." This error appeared as well in the first German edition (Nuremberg: Endter, 1688), of which the 1702, 1703, and the present 1710 editions are faithful copies. I locate no copies of any of the early German editions in American libraries. There are copies of the Leipzig 1753 edition (under a slightly variant title, Anweisung zum Mignaturmahlen...) at the Getty, and of the 1766 edition at Queen's University Library (Ontario).

VD18 1299331X; Holzmann & Bohatta, Deutsches Anonymen-Lexikon I, 2639 (1688 edition); Schiessl, Die deutschsprachige Literatur zu Werkstoffen und Techniken der Malerei von 1530 bis ca. 1950 (1989), 581-585.