Relevant recipes from other sources
Distemper
De Mayerne Manuscript, in Lost Secrets of Flemish Painting, 2001, Donald C. Fels Jr.
(Ms. p. 148)
'For Tempera Painting (324)
Since paints made with glue, egg white or gum are much darker in the damp state than when they dry, one should, after the canvas has been undercoated, dampen it from behind and paint on it. Thus you will not be deceived.
Also when improving [that is painting over] a tempera picture, dampen the painting from behind, so that the penetrating moisture makes the colors on the canvas appear as they are in pots of shells and the eyes will not be deceived and the improvement will not have unequal places, then paint as you think useful. So the whole work after drying will be equal and in agreement.
Remember the tin palette made with various depressions that Bleyenberg used for tempera.'
(Ms p. 148 verso)
With regard to the liquid for dissolving paints, besides fish glue and glue made of glove leather scraps, egg white thinned with fig juice that the old painters used should be considered. This is stronger or at least as strong as fish glue and always stays fluid.
Method for Varnishing Illumination. (324a)
For this a sticky liquid that has body and that is transparent so that it in no way alters the color is necessary above all. This liquid can mainly be very light and clear fish glue boiled to a thicker, stronger consistency. See whether common strong Flemish glue which is clear and light is suitable. Likewise the strong gelatine of stag horn. Likewise gum tragacanth thoroughly dissolved in some distilled water (or if the work is worth it) rose water. Likewise egg white. Likewise gum arabic, plumb resin, cherry tree resin, dissolved into the consistency of syrup, but especially the Arabian gum.
This liquid is put into a bowl, into a basin or into a tub and the illumination lightly drawn through it, or if the piece is big, it is laid at an angle over a sufficiently large basin and the… (Ms. p.149)
… liquid is deftly poured over it with a spoon in such a way that the liquid flows over it all at once and then the piece is set immediately on a [table] top and allowed to dry.
If one had a very large long haired squirrel tail brush, it could be useful for this, but it would have to be done in one very light motion. I believe the other method of pouring it over is surer.
The well dried piece is painted over with a varnish that be very desiccating like those made without turpentine, with gum, mastic, benzoin purified in ethanol and very light and pure oil of turpentine and spikenard oil.'
[Base coat of gum Tracacanth] (324b)
A very good strong base is made when gum tragacanth is soften and dissolved a whole night long on warm coals in pure water. Take white starch flour and dissolve it in clear water very thinly, as if it were to be used for laundry starching, to this mixture add your solution of gum tracaganth, and boil it down to the desired consistency, the starch becomes very white and clear, so it makes the laundry very white,. but makes it brittle and spoils it greatly; for our trick its not so and it can perform good service.
If you want the glue very fluid, than add a little of the above dissolved starch, a lot of the gum tragacanth solution, simply boil it down to the (syrupy thickness) that can easily be stroke on and sticks very hard.’
ShadowsDe Mayerne, 2001, Donal Fels Jr.Illumination. (173)Cooper, the Younger, Nephew of M. Huskins, February 1634.MS. P.79Everything we see is differentiated according to proportion or color or by both together. The causes of these differentiations are light and shadow. A lustrous color is put in place of light, like white, gold, silver, whose ouster of every kind and mixture virtually reproduces life. For the dark and shadowy parts dark, chiefly black color is used.'...Ms. p. 79 verso Kinds of Black and Shadow Colors'Lamp black. fir resin black. Burnt ivory or stag horn black. Linden wood charcoal. Burnt vine black. Soot from peach stones... Cologne earth, umber... and a great number procured from burnt...Of these I use... and [consider] suitable, burnt fir resin black, ivory or stag horn black, Linden charcoal, while many of the bad pigments I prefer from time to time [peach] stone black, Cologne earth and stove soot.Moreover the shadows have the powerI apply very dark paint whether simple or mixed in two tones {or shades} so that the medium appears like real light.'Ms. p.82 verso after a long list of colours. Then comes a section reading:'Where necessary black can sometimes be used under the colors [that is, for gradation]. Regarding shading off it should be noted that every color can stand the addition of a little honey.'
Ms. p. 88 Faces and Flesh PartsWhite lead, yellow, ocher, brown red. For shading: white lead, yellow ocher, ivory black.Ms. p. 88 versoFor strengthening [deepening] ivory black, Dutch pink, brown red.If the face is dark, then use more brown red and yellow ocher on the highlights.' Interest in different colours of flesh but this is not achieved by layering over shadow.
Ms. p.98 Section is headed: 'Short Treatise on the Way to Learn Painting And To Be Able To Mix Paints' a few pages in, at MS.P 107 'Methods for doing the nude and faces.After the landscape and the draperies have been somewhat sketched it is appropriate to say something about the faces and the nude, which in truth is the main subject of the whole work. It is unquestionably true that faces are painted either from imagination or from nature as every visible thing whatsoever is copied from nature. Let us begin with faces that are done from imagination [i.e. fancifully done] of men, women, and even small children. Carnation is usually made with white lead, or peruse with vermillion or lead minimum, or lake, or yellow ocher, as one will have it or as the work requires for the masculine, as well as the feminine, flesh tones. Shading can be done with one of the following colors: yellow ocher, umber earth, or also black, lake or ashpaltum. These colors can be mixed with white or carnation paint, made brighter or darker as wished. The hair and beard are done as desired with dark ocher, umber and the like, and when the light of the same is applied and finished, it is lightly touched up here and there as necessary with a little vermillion and lake. To give flesh paint or carnation permanence it is made with white and lake, or vermillion and good ocher; the knees, the face, elbows, hands and feet should be kept somewhat redder than the rest of the body.The usual light color is heightened with even a stronger light on all things, each according to the illumination thrown by light and shadow.' There are parallels in the pigments he suggests for shadows, and in the mention of male and female flesh tones. But this does not read like a process of layering from the dark below to the light on top, rather it is oil, and the colours are mixed together.

Cennino Cennini
Verdaccio Ch 67, Broecke translation p.101Cennini describes the pigments to be mixed together for the verdaccio, then how to apply it.
'And go little by little with your brush almost dry of this colour, which is called verdaccio in Florence and bazzeo in Siena....
Then get a little thoroughly liquid green earth in another pot and, with a bristle brush which has been half squeezed out between the thumb and forefinger of your left hand, start shading under the chin and more in the part where the face should be darker, going about marking out beneath the lips on the mouth and in the corners of the mouth, beneath the nose and to the side beneath the eyebrows: strongly towards the nose, a little at the end where the eye towards the ear. And go sensitively over the whole face and the hands where there has to be flesh colour in the same way. Then get a pointed vair brush and start thoroughly reinforcing all the outlines, nose, eyes, lips and ears with verdaccio.'
In the original Italian, Cennino uses the verb ‘onbrare’ for the sentence about shading under the chin. Boecke has translated this as ‘shading’. Original text: ‘poi abbi unpocho diverde/ terra ben liquido inn un altro vasello econ penello di/ setolo mezzo premuto coldito grosso e cchol lungho dellaman/ zancha va chomincia a onbrare sotto il mento e piu da / lla parte dove essere piu schuro [il viso]’.


In the section about painting on panel, ch160, p190 of Broecke, Cennino discusses covering the verdaccio layers, and again there is the use of the term ‘onbre del verdaccio.’

Thompson p.22 (Need to look this up in Lara Broecke translation of Cennini) ‘Know that there are several kinds of black colors. There is a black which is a soft, black stone; it is a fat color. Bearing in mind that every lean color is better than a fat one…
Then there is a black which is made from vine twigs; these twigs are to be burned; and when they are burnt, throw water on them, and quench them; and work them up like the other black. And this is a color both black and lean; and it is one of the perfect colors which we employ, and it is the whole… There is another black which is made from burnt almond shells or peach stones, and this is a perfect black, and fine. There is another black which is made in this manner: take a lamp full of linseed oil, and fill the lamp with this oil, and light the lamp...'

Theophilus - Hawthorn translation
Theophilus, very near to the beginning, has interesting info about the shadow pigment. P.17'The first shadow pigmentWhen you have mixed the flesh-color pigment and have laid in the faces and nude bodies with it, mix with it prasinus [usually regarded as green earth, but doubts raised in Hawthorne translation who suggests it may be related to the leek-green gem prasitis (Theophrastus) or prasius (Pliny). ], the red that is burnt from ocher, and a little cinnabar, and so make shadow pigment. With this you should delineate the eyebrows and eyes, the nostrils and mouth, the chin, the hollows round the nostrils, the temples, the wrinkles on the forehead and neck, the roundness of the face, the beards of young men, the fingers and toes, and all the distinctive limbs of the nude body.'
There is a little bit of distinction in the second shadow pigment of theophilus for the faces of ‘boys and women’. This is not a shadow beneath the skin, but rather one that is put on top of the flesh.
P.18 'The second shadow pigmentNext, take the above-mentioned shadow pigment and mix more prasinus and red with it to make a darker shade of the former pigment. Lay in the intermediate space between the eyebrows and the eyes and in the centre below the eyes, close to the nose, between the mouth and chin, the down or slight beards of adolescents, the half of the palms facing the thumb, the feet above the smaller toes, and the faces of boys and women from the chin up to the temples.'