The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (356 page)

paper
.

A tissue of vegetable fibres used for writing, drawing, and printing on. It is an oriental invention carried from the Far to the Middle East by the Turks during the Dark Ages. In Europe it is first traceable in the 12th cent. among the Moors in Spain, where it was made as well as imported. It was known in southern Italy at much the same time. France, southern Germany, and Switzerland had well-developed industries in paper by the end of the 14th cent. White paper was first made in England in 1495, but not on a large scale until the 18th cent. Until 1800 European paper was made entirely of rags pulped in water, and drawing-paper of the best quality is still made by hand in the traditional way. Writing papers, less expensive drawing-papers, and some book papers are machine made of a mixture of cotton, hemp, esparto, and wood, with a good deal of china clay added to make them smooth and opaque,
size
to make them non-absorbent, and starch to make them stiff. Cheaper papers are machine-made wholly of wood. Oriental papers made of bamboo, rice straw, and mulberry bark are imported for artists' use.

 
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(French: ‘pasted paper’). A variety of
collage
in which pieces of decorative paper are incorporated into a picture or, stuck on a ground such as canvas, themselves constitute the picture. The technique was invented by
Braque
in 1913 when he incorporated pieces of wallpaper simulating wood graining in a still life and it was almost immediately adopted by
Picasso
.
Matisse
was perhaps the greatest exponent of the technique.

 
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papyrus
.

A writing material prepared from the stem of the marsh plant of the same name, growing in antiquity principally in Egypt and now in the Sudan. It was used in Egypt from the third millennium BC onwards and was the standard writing material in ancient Greece and throughout the Roman empire. From the 4th cent. AD onwards it was increasingly replaced by
parchment
.

 
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parchment
.

Writing material made from the skins of sheep or calf, less frequently pig, goat, and other animals; it has also been used for painting, and occasionally for printing and bookbinding.
Pliny
says that it was invented in the second cent. BC in Pergamum; hence the name ‘parchment’ from the Latin
pergamena
, ‘of Pergamum’. Skin had been used as a writing material before this, but the refined methods of cleaning and stretching involved in making parchment enabled both sides of a leaf to be used, leading eventually to the supplanting of the manuscript roll by the bound book. Vellum is a fine kind of parchment made from the delicate skins of young (sometimes stillborn) animals.
Paper
began to replace parchment from about the 14th cent., but parchment is still used for certain kinds of documents, and the name is often applied to high-quality writing paper.

 
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Pareja , Juan de
.

See
VELÁZQUEZ

 
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(d. 1259).
English chronicler and
miniaturist
. He became a monk at St Albans in 1217 and was appointed monastery chronicler in 1236. In 1248 he visited Norway to reform the monastery of St Benet-Holme, but otherwise seems never to have travelled further than London (the surname Paris is found elsewhere in England in the 13th cent. and does not necessarily imply that he had any French associations). Matthew carried on the abbey's
Chronica Majora
from 1235 until his death (it is now divided between Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the BL, London) and also wrote a summary of the chief events between 1200 and 1250 that is known as the
Historia Minor
or
Historia Anglorum
(BL). His historical manuscripts are almost unique in being illustrated with numerous marginal scenes and symbols from his own hand. He also composed several Lives of the Saints (the
Life of St Alban
, Trinity College, Dublin, is autograph) in which the illustrations occupy the upper half of the page and are of equal importance with the text. The frontispiece to his
Historia Anglorum
is his only signed work—a self-portrait showing him on his knees dedicating the manuscript to the Virgin. It is a tinted outline drawing, and because of his fame there has been a mistaken tendency to assign all mid 13th-cent. English work of this character to St Albans in general and, if at all plausible, to his hand.