Maria Alessandra Chessa
V&A/RCA
BnF Ms. Fr. 640, fol. 3r
Making and Knowing Coral
Fol. 3r, transcription
<title id=”p003r_a1″>Coral contrefaict</title>
<ab id=”p003r_b1″>Il fault premierement faire les branches de boys ou<lb/>
prendre une branche despine bisarre puys fondre une<lb/>
lb. de poix resine claire de la plus belle et y mectre<lb/>
une once de vermeillon broye subtillem{ent} avecq huile de noix<lb/>
Et si tu y adjoustes un peu de laque platte de venise<lb/>
la couleur en sera plus vive et remuer le tout dans la<lb/>
resine fondue sur foeu de charbon et non de flamme de<lb/>
peur que le feu ne sy prenne Apres trempe en tournoya{n}t <lb/>
tes branches dedans & sil y restoit quelque filament<lb/>
tourne la branche sur la chaleur du charbon</ab>
<note id=“p003r_c1a”>La colophonie nest aultre chose que<lb/>
rousine recuite Pour bien la faire<lb/>
Ayes un pot plombe & fais fondre la<lb/>
resine & bouillir sur brasier une bonne<lb/>
heure & jusques a ce quelle ne demonstre<lb/>
estre poinct espesse ains<lb/>
claire & liquide co{mm}e<lb/>
eau & que facillement<lb/>
elle coule & file au bout<lb/>
d’un baston avecq lequel tu la broyes & en fais<lb/>
lessay Lors coule la<lb/>
par quelque gros caneva<lb/>
ou estamine bien claire<lb/>
de sorte quen coulant<lb/>
elle tombe dans du<lb/>
vinaigre le plus fort<lb/>
que tu pourras Car le vinaigre luy donne<lb/>
force & lempesche destre<lb/>
si frangible Reitere<lb/>
cela deulx ou trois<lb/>
fois & elle sera belle<lb/>
& bien purifiee pour<lb/>
contrefaire ton coral<lb/>
Tu peulx mesler la<lb/>
quarte partie de mastic<lb/>
parmy ta rousine purifiee<lb/>
pour la rendre plus ferme<lb/>
et plus belle & si tu prenois<lb/>
la seule larme du mastic<lb/>
tant mieulx seroit mais<lb/>
il seroit trop long</note>
<note id=“p003r_c1b”>soufre & vermeillon<lb/>
faict le mesme effect</note>
<note id=“p003r_c1c”>Le coral faict desmail de gueule endure la lime et le polissem{ent}</note>
<note id=“p003r_c1d”>Il se faict co{mm}e le ciment qui est<lb/>
plus fort mesle de verre (que de) <lb/>
pile que de brique Ainsy on y<lb/>
mesle avecq le vermeillon de lesmail<lb/>
de gueule qui est rouge en corps bien<lb/>
pile Ainsy de toutes couleurs desmails</note>
Fol. 3r translation
<title id=”p003r_a1″>Imitation coral</title>
<ab id=”p003r_b1″>One must first make the branches from wood or take a fantastical thorn branch, then melt a pound of the best possible clear pine resin and add one ounce of finely ground vermilion together with walnut oil, and if you add a little Venice lake the color will be all the more vivid, and stir all together into the resin, molten over a charcoal fire, not over an open flame, lest it catch fire. Then dip in your branches with a swirling motion. And should there remain any filaments, turn the branch over the heat of the charcoal.</ab>
<note id=”p003r_c1a”>Colophony is nothing other than resin that has been cooked again. To do it well, you take a leaded pot and melt the resin, boiling it over the brazier for a good hour until it appears not thick but clear and liquid like water and it easily runs as a thread off the end of a stick, which you use to crush and test it. Then pour it through a coarse canvas or tammy cloth so that it falls into the strongest vinegar you can find, because the vinegar makes it strong and makes it less brittle. Repeat this two or three times and it will be fine and well purified. To imitate your coral, you can mix a fourth part of mastic with your purified resin to make it more solid and finer, and if you should use just one drop of mastic, it would be all the better, but it would take too long.</note>
<note id=“p003r_c1b”>Sulfur and vermilion have the same effect.</note>
<note id=“p003r_c1c”>Coral made of red enamel withstands filing and polishing.</note>
<note id=“p003r_c1d”>It is made like cement, which is stronger when mixed with crushed glass rather than with brick. In the same way, together with the vermilion, one mixes in opaque red enamel, finely ground. It is the same way with all enamel colors.</note>
The perceived nature of coral in the early modern period was the outcome of a combined cultural sedimentation of different traditions. These were transmitted by a core of widespread literary texts among the learned, including physicians, artists, humanists and naturalists, and penetrated popular culture in the form of long lasting belief and knowledge systems.
The most important source was Ovid’s Metamorphoses written in the first decade CE. The poem defined the origins of coral in a compelling mythological framework as the product of an obscure transformation. When Perseus laid the severed head of Medusa on the seashore, some seaborne sticks came in contact with the Gorgon’s head and were soon turned into stone: coral was born. Ovid’s poem was exceptionally popular through the centuries, laying the foundation for a persistent tradition that was incorporated in Pliny’s encyclopaedic work. Naturalis Historia, written only 70 years after Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was a most influential source to which, even after centuries, early modern European scholars continued to refer. When discussing coral, Pliny stated that it was also named Gorgonia as its original soft material turned into the hardness of stone interlocking the myth of Medusa to the supposed property and nature of coral.
In the course of the sixteenth century some of this information started to be questioned. Pietro Andrea Matthioli in 1563 argued that the berries of coral mentioned by Pliny were nothing else than the polished beads made by artisans.1 However the idea of the transformative nature of coral turning from a soft material into a hard one when removed from water persisted, conceivably due to the lack of any direct knowledge of its condition under the sea. Significantly one of the first texts questioning that information refers to the evidence from coral hunters: Daniello Bartoli in his treatise on coagulation, dated 1681, refers to an entrepreneur in the coral hunt who ascertained coral as being hard even under the sea.2 Nevertheless Bartoli still accepted a hardening process taking place in the reproductive season, which demonstrates a resilience of such a belief and the struggle in fitting new evidence within traditional knowledge.3 An early empirical challenge to the textual tradition can be traced in the 1609 Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia by Anselmus de Boodt. When discussing the nature of coral he refers to a specific branch examined in the antiquarium of Rudolf II, which apparently showed both a vegetal part and a mineral one.4 On such an evidence he rejects the common belief of coral turning into stone outside seawater and reports a theory based on a “stonifying sap” of coral (called succus lapidescens). According to him the stonifying sap gradually turned the vegetal plant of coral into stone.5 That was based on the current opinion among scholars as expressed in Jamnitzer’s hybrid idea for the Daphne as materializing the concept of metamorphosis. In Jamnitzer’s artefact the transformative nature of coral meaningfully conveyed Ovid’s myth of the nymph turned into a laurel tree. [Fig. 1, Jamnitzer, Daphne, Dresden, Grünes Gewolbe]
The current classification of the natural world indeed considered coral as an entity halfway between the vegetal and mineral spheres. Ferrante Imperato, when organizing the complexity of nature in a taxonomical structure placed coral after the stones and before mushrooms and plants. His definition of coral, similarly to De Boodt’s, described a leafless bush made of a “stony substance” (sostanza pietrigna) that could grow as a plant both on rocks and on other shrubs by covering their branches “like a dressing” (in modo di veste).6 This is why, he reports, when coral accidentally snaps, we can occasionally see an inner core of wood (si scopre l’interno legnoso).7 It would appear likely that he was looking at a branch of imitation coral, as this coincides precisely with the appearance of the imitation coral produced following the recipe for “Imitation coral” on fol. 3r. (Fig. 2)
Our contemporary knowledge of coral differs from both Imperato’s and de Boodt’s observations. Coral does not have an internal ligneous structure or any vegetal components at all. Unfortunately it is impossible to trace extant objects to which those naturalists referred, however, in the absence of any additional clue, it is licit to speculate whether what they examined was natural coral or not.
The practice of producing imitation coral, as it appears in the sources, was a common one. In my brief survey I have identified several recipes for imitation coral from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century.8 These recipes fall into three main typologies (some authors provide more than one recipe): The first type of imitation coral recipe is the most common to appear in the texts. It consists of a mouldable paste to be pressed into moulds and dried. The paste was a combination of horn powder mixed with ashes and water and the addition of cinnabar as a red dyeing agent. This first type was apparently the most appropriate for paternoster beads.9
A second type of recipes involved the use of fragments of natural coral. Coral was crushed into a fine powder and left in a solution of lemon or orange juice, mixed with a dyeing agent such as cinnabar, minium or sinoper and kept under a layer of horse droppings for a number of days. The paste thus obtained was left to dry. This recipe, as mentioned by Giovanni Battista della Porta, produced a material very similar to natural coral, and was recommended for making small objects like cups, but also as a substance for repairing broken coral.10 De Boodt also mentions this second method as used by forgers who expressly wanted to imitate the properties and powers of coral. On the other hand, he writes, other forgers are instead interested in imitating the shape and colour of coral, and this is the third type of recipe.11
The recipe in the French manuscript at the BNF can be mentioned as the third different method for imitation coral involving the use of a vegetal branch of a plant. The only other versions that I was able to trace among the texts were the recipe mentioned by Anselmus De Boodt and its short copy by Thomas Nicols.12 De Boodt mentions the use of a twig of wild pear tree. Once cleaned it was covered with a solid and warm paste made of clarified pine resin, white wax, and cinnabar.13 The mixture was then moulded around the twig over the heat of charcoal fire.14 This procedure was supposed to produce a perfect imitation of coral that only experts could distinguish. This recipe is thus a slightly different and less detailed version of the one in Ms Fr. 640, although the result must have been substantially similar.15 The Ms. Fr. 640 recipe appears more practically oriented, as the author mentions the use of Venice lacque as an alternative pigment and the use of walnut oil as a solvent for ground vermillion.
The procedure for this third type of imitation coral is no doubt the most interesting one, not just because of the fine result achievable, but also because of the process it entails. It is therefore reasonable to reflect on the analogy that it presents with the perceived transformative process of natural coral: The viscous red substance, called emplastre in the recipe described by de Boodt, could easily call to mind the “stonifying sap” of natural coral in his treatment of natural coral. In the same way, as the stonifying sap was responsible for the transition of coral from a yielding vegetal material into the hardness of stone, accordingly the thick red mixture of the recipe for imitation coral solidified like stone. Finally, it is worth considering the distinctive way the same red substance coated the branches in the recipe, as it reminds us of the vivid description of natural coral given by Ferrante Imperato, presenting coral as an organism that, like a parasite, could grow over other sea-plants and covers their branches in a process very similar to that described in the recipe.16
The homologies between the descriptions of the two naturalists and the third type of recipe are particularly suggestive. Thus, such recipes should not be treated as from a separate sphere, set off from the system of knowledge regarding the genesis of stones and stony substances. In particular, we should keep in mind that not all imitations and forgeries were considered in the same light. Some methods for making artificial gems, as Ferrante Imperato tells us, could indeed be similar to the natural processes of the formation of stones, implying the possibility that forgers, through the study of nature, could have tried to harness its processes in order to imitate it more perfectly.17 Finally, it is useful to ponder whether and how the circulation of some high quality artificial products could have influenced early observations of natural phenomena. In the specific case of coral, it seems likely that the creation of forgeries and imitations that aspired to repeat natural processes stimulated the scholars’ views of the processes of nature, as much as the other way around.
1 Pietro Andrea Matthioli, I discorsi di M. Pietro And. Matthioli Sanese, (Venezia, 1563) p. 717 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xF1cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA18&dq=mattioli+discorsi+sui+libri+di+dioscoride&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vdxRVYa2Kuqd7Aa6x4HgCA&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=bacche%20simili%20alle%20corniole&f=false
2 Daniello Bartoli, Del ghiaccio e della coagulatione, (Roma, 1681) p. 220 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sBwD-n9jyyUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22daniello+bartoli%22+del+ghiaccio&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qOFRVZOBJYOE7gbDq4C4CA&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=gentilhuomo&f=false
3 Ibid., p. 221
4 Anselmus de Boodt, Gemmarum et lapidum historia, (Hannover, 1609) p. 154 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SrAUAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=gemmarum+et+lapidum&hl=en&sa=X&ei=K-RRVbyLFufD7gb2m4OIBA&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=antiquarium&f=false
A further connection to generation and reproduction is indicated by Rabelais, who, with typical spirit, provides a list of terms that men give to their male member: “L’une la nommoit ‘ma petite dille’, l’aultre ‘ma pine’, ‘l’aultre ‘ma branche de coural’….” Gargantua, ch. 11, p. 35, in Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1994). Thanks to Charlotte Buecheler for this reference.
5 Ibid.
6 Ferrante Imperato, Dell’Historia Naturale, 1599 (ed. Venezia, 1672) p. 622
7 ibid.
8 Giovanni Villani (?), Segreti di Giovanni Villani, 16th century manuscript, (maybe from the 14th c.). Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Ms. Campori R.5.17
Girolamo Ruscelli (?), La seconda parte de’ secreti del Reverendo Donno Alessio Piemontese, ed. 1559
Gabriele Falloppio, Secreti diversi et miracolosi. 1563
Timoteo Rossello, Della summa de’ secreti universali, 1565
Anselmus de Boodt, Gemmarum et lapidum historia, 1609
Anselmus de Boodt, Le parfaict joaillier, 1644
Thomas Nicols, Lapidary or the history of precious stones, 1652
Giovan Battista della Porta, Dei miracoli et maravigliosi effetti dalla natura, 1662
Lazaro Grandi, Alfabeto di secreti medicinali, 1666
Domenico Auda, Breve compendio di maravigliosi secreti, 1670
Giuseppe Quinti, Meravigliosi secreti medicinali, 1711
9 Giovanni Villani (?), Segreti di Giovanni Villani, 16th century manuscript (perhaps from the 14th c.). Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Ms. Campori R.5.17. Download the transcription here: http://bibliotecaestense.beniculturali.it/info/img/cat/i-mo-beu-stru-archeo-gamma.r.5.17.pdf See recipes n. 470 (A fare coralli contrafatti), p. 89 in the transcription document and also 1071 (A fare coralli contrafatti), p. 202 in the transcription document.
10 Giovan Battista della Porta, Dei miracoli et maravigliosi effetti dalla natura prodotti, (Venezia, 1562) p. 121 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fJJXAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA3-PT94&dq=Giovan+Battista+della+Porta,+Dei+miracoli+et+maravigliosi+effetti+della+natura&hl=it&sa=X&ei=TQRSVeHqIqyp7AbL_oCoBA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=raschiature&f=false
11 Anselmus de Boodt, Le parfaict joaillier, 1644 p. 405 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HrM-AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=anselmus+de+boodt&hl=it&sa=X&ei=JQNSVYmQGorbUZv8gKgD&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Chapitre%20CLVI&f=false
12 Thomas Nicols, Lapidary or the history of precious stones, (Cambridge, 1652). p. 162
13 Interestingly these same constituents (pine resin or colofonia and white wax, apart from the cinnabar pigment) were also traditionally used in the assemblage of the Florentine commesso di pietre dure. Annamaria Giusti, L’Arte delle Pietre Dure, (Firenze: Le lettere, 2005) p. 256. The use of a resin (a solidified secretion from a plant) that hardens composing a work of stones appears extremely meaningful, as it replicates the same principle of the “stonifying sap” mentioned by de Boodt, which turned the vegetal organism of coral into a mineral one.
14 Anselmus de Boodt, Le parfaict joaillier, 1644p. 405-406.
15 The French recipe instructs the reader to dip the branch in the resin instead of coating it directly as mentioned by de Boodt.
16 Ferrante Imperato, Dell’Historia Naturale, 1599 (ed. Venezia, 1672) p. 622
17 Ferrante Imperato, Dell’Historia Naturale, 1599 (ed. Venezia, 1672) p. 521 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=heGCGe1Rn3YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ferrante+imperato+historia+naturale&hl=en&sa=X&ei=w_FRVdrSLcWC7gbyuoDYDA&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=snippet&q=%22generazion%20naturale%22&f=false