The testimonies, direct or indirect, against the employment of any such substances by the Venetian painters, in the solid part of their work, seem, notwithstanding, very conclusive; we begin with the writer just named. In his principal composition, a poem[6] describing the practice and the productions of the Venetian painters, Boschini speaks of certain colours which they shunned, and adds:--"In like manner (they avoided) shining liquids and varnishes, which I should rather call lackers;[7] for the surface of flesh, if natural and unadorned, assuredly does not shine, nature speaks as to this plainly." After alluding to the possible alteration of this natural appearance by means of cosmetics, he continues: "Foreign artists set such great store by these varnishes, that a shining surface seems to them the only desirable quality in art. What trash it is they prize! fir-resin, mastic, and sandarach, and larch-resin (not to say treacle), stuff fit to polish boots.[8] If those great painters of ours had to represent armour, a gold vase, a mirror, or anything of the kind, they made it shine with (simple) colours."[9] This writer so frequently alludes to the Flemish painters, of whose great reputation he sometimes seems jealous, that the above strong expression of opinion may have been pointed at them. On the other hand it is to be observed that the term _forestieri_, strangers, does not necessarily mean transalpine foreigners, but includes those Italians who were not of the Venetian state.[10] The directions given by Raphael Borghini,[11] and after him by Armenini,[12] respecting the use and preparation of varnishes made from the very materials in question, may thus have been comprehended in the censure, especially as some of these recipes were copied and republished in Venice by Bisagno,[13] in 1642--that is, only six years before Boschini's poem appeared. Ridolfi's Lives of the Venetian Painters[14] (1648) may be mentioned with the two last. His only observation respecting the vehicle is, that Giovanni Bellini, after introducing himself by an artifice into the painting-room of Antonello da Messina, saw that painter dip his brush from time to time in linseed oil. This story, related about two hundred years after the supposed event, is certainly not to be adduced as very striking evidence in any way.[15]