Less known as _English Red_, _Prussian Red_, and _Scarlet Ochre_. True Venetian red, that is, the red of the Venetians, was probably brought from India, and similar to our modern Indian red. The Venetian red of the present day, however, is an artificial product, containing no earthy base, and therefore improperly classed among the ochres. It is prepared by calcining sulphate of iron, to which a little nitre may be advantageously added. The result is a peroxide of iron, resembling light red, but more powerful, and of a more scarlet hue. It is very permanent, but being a purely iron pigment, should be cautiously employed with colours affected by that metal. Though not bright, its tints are clear, and it mixes and works kindly with cobalt or French blue, affording fine pearly grays. Heightened by madder lake, it furnishes a glowing red, very useful in some descriptions of skies; and saddened by black, it gives low toned reds of good quality for buildings. With white it produces carnation tints nearly approaching to nature, and much employed by Titian, Vandyke, and others. Compounded with aureolin, Venetian red yields a clear orange of considerable transparency. _Spanish Red_ is an ochre differing little from the above. 86. PURE SCARLET, Or _Iodine Scarlet_, is an iodide of mercury, having the body and opacity of vermilion, and being as much inferior to it in permanence as it is superior in brilliancy. Of all artistic pigments, it is at once the most dazzling and the most fugitive, and should have no place on the palette. If used, it should be with an ivory knife, as iron and most metals change it to colours varying from yellow to black; hence it should never be compounded with metallic pigments. So sensitive, indeed, is it to the slightest touch of metal, that it has been known to turn to a dull brown merely by being washed over with a colour which had been taken out of its saucer with a penknife. In the cake, it must be carefully kept wrapped up in paper, otherwise the presence of metal tubes or a knife in the colour-box may spoil it. By a foul atmosphere, the scarlet is soon utterly destroyed, and even metallized. In contact with the air, it quickly fades away; and has been found to vanish completely, when exposed to light alone. Employed in water, a thick glaze of gum-arabic or gamboge adds to its stability. As a landscape pigment, the colour is out of the general scale of nature; but in flower-painting its charms are almost irresistible. Nothing certainly can approach it as a colour for scarlet geraniums, but its beauty is almost as fleeting as the flowers. 87. RED CHROME, Also called _Scarlet Chrome_, is a bright chromate of lead of an orange-red colour, the red being predominant. Rank in tone, it is liable to the changes of the yellow chromes, though in a less degree. The recent introduction of cadmium red renders the use of this unnecessary. 88. RED LEAD,