| Ochres,
yellows, browns and other natural colored chalks were available by the sixteenth
century. Early in the century Milanese artists like Bernardo Luini, following
Leonardo's example, were using them for flesh tones and for details. Jacopo
Bassano and Federico Barocci of Urbino developed a sophisticated technique
of combining them, blurring the contours by rubbing the chalk with the finger
or a leather stump. By the eighteenth century French artists had formalized
the medium for highly finished portraits which duplicated in their own way
the effect of finished oils. At the same time manufacturers began to produce
artifical chals, which superseded natural chalks within a generation or
two.
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