Questions this research will address

'Female Shadows' in Distemper
1. A. What was ‘distemper’ painting to the author-pracitioner? Can answering this shed any light on broader questions about ‘distemper’ painting technique?
B. What are the processes required for painting with glue on canvas? What are the handling properties of glue and water based paint? What are the optical properties of glue
and water based paint on canvas, and how does a freshly painted glue on canvas work appear?
C. How does working with a glue based medium compare to an egg based medium? Is working in egg-white (which is thought to have been an alternative medium for similar
kinds of painting on canvas, and which is referred to as an alternative for ‘distemper’ in the Ms) similar from an ‘experiential’ point of view? Are the handling properties similar?
And/ or Does it achieve similar results?
This could shed light on the broader question of what we should interpret when we come across references to 'distemper' or its translations in other languages in early modern
texts, and how this medium or products produced using it were understood in the early modern period. Is our tendency to try and characterise paintings according to the
material constituents of their medium anachronistic?

Frequently in the relevant excerpts from Ms. Fr 640 the term 'distemper' is opposed to the term 'oil', which suggests that the difference between oil and distemper was the most crucial binary to the author.
The following excerpt suggests that there was also perhaps a distinction in the author's mind between 'distemper' and 'distemper with egg':
<ab>Because it is quite unpleasant to paint in distemper on <m>wood</m> and difficult to paint a face well, some distemper their colors with <m>egg white</m> and apply it with a sponge, or mix it with the <m>^egg yolk</m>, <m>water</m>, and beat it strongly with the <m>bark of a fig tree</m>. With this they paint and blend on the <m>wood</m>, as in <m>oil</m>, and this holds the varnish. But this does not last.</ab>

2) A. To understand the importance of ‘shadows’ to the author-pracitioner, particularly gender specific shadows. To understand what impact the differently coloured shadow layers have on the final appearance of a face and try to understand whether the primary significance of changing shadow layer according to gender is optical/practical, or if there is another reasoning behind this.
Can this shed any light on discussion of shadows in other treatises of this time? How particular is the idea of gendered shadows to this manuscript?