Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 100. (Budapest, 2004)

URBACH, ZSUZSA: Ein flämischer ikonographischer Bildtypus im italienischen Quattrocento. Bemerkungen zur Studie von Éva Eszláry

: earlier role in the workshops as the material par excellence for model-books.

20 Parchment, in actual fact, was replaced ultimately by paper when artistic interest turned from the high-detailed and well-finished model drawings that preserved the formal treasures of the workshop, toward the individual sketches redolent of artistic invention.

21 The drawings of the Budapest Model-book were prepared on parchment of high-quality goatskin.

22 Since the end of the fifteenth century, they were already often drawing on paper in the Italian workshops, both Loránd Zentai and Gyula Gajdó believed that the Budapest Model-book must have been produced in a workshop in which parchment would have still been easily available in large quantities, and just such a place would have been a workshop for the illuminators. Insomuch as the small-scale, high-detailed drawings of the Budapest Model-book were prepared expressly for a model-book, aside from the smooth surface of the sheets, an important expectation would have most probably concerned the durability of the booklet itself. The traditionally reliable parchment was employed for such purposes not only by the illuminators, but also by painters, engravers and goldsmiths at the end of the quattrocento in just the same way as the less expensive, but more perishable paper.

23 The uncertainty concerning the durability of paper resulted in official documents being written exclusively on parchment for quite some time, while in artist circles, this was still valid even in the mid-sixteenth century.

24 Thus, all the workshops kept parchment that they had purchased from the makers, chiefly in the form of sheets bound into quires, in storage, even if this occurred in greater quantity than with the illuminators.

25 The other argument of Loránd Zentai and Gyula Gajdó that spoke in favour of the Budapest Model-book originating in an illuminator workshop was the small size of the booklet. Nevertheless, the dimensions of the Budapest Model-book are not especially uncommon, since the larger volumes were not only more complicated to use, and more expensive, but they were also significantly more fragile, ludging by the dimensions of the model-books still in existence, they present quite a variegated picture, from which we can hardly deduce any sort of general consis20 Even if the majority of model-books were produced on parchment at first, see Serieller, op. cit. (n. 1), 38; Elen, op. cit. (n. 2), 31. From the fifteenth century in North-Italy, paper and parchment were already of equal preference. The two oldest surviving paper model-books originate in Lombardy and Tuscany; this nevertheless does not mean that paper definitively superseded parchment, since a good number of parchment model-books have also remained from this period, among them the Rothschild Model-book of Florence, also produced in the first half of the fifteenth century, see ibid., cat. 18. 21 Ames-Lewis, op. cit. 1981 (n. 1), 21. 22 Gajdó, op. cit. (n. 7), 9. 23 Elen, op. cit. (n. 2), 32-35. 24 "Ma se bene il disegnar è assai, meglio è nondimeno mettere in opera, poiché hanno maggior vita lbpere che le carte disegnate. It is true, though drawing is a great thing, that it is better to paint, since the painting lasts longer than the drawing set to paper." (G. Vasari, Le vite de'più eccelenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da M. Giorgio Vasari, ed. G. Milanesi, vol. 3, Florence 1848, 36.) 25 Serieller, op. cit. (n. 1), 40.