This collection of translated passages on painting techniques is taken from six seventeenth-century treatises written in Spain and Portugal by Nunes, Corducho, Pacheco, Hidalgo and Velasco. These technical writings reveal invaluable information about the artists' painting methods, providing both art historians and conservators with a firmer base for dealing with practical and theoretical problems related to the study and conservation of Spanish baroque painting. The writings provide a catalogue of materials available to the artists of a certain time and place, and a compendium of painting practices. In addition to this practical background material, the treatises also offer a glimpse of the artist's view of himself as a practitioner of his art, a dimension of the artist that is difficult to perceive through formal and iconographic study alone. The editor has not simply translated these important sources. She has made the material understandable to the audience through scrupulous annotation of technical terms and practices.