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第1段
1 .Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.
听一段艺术史课上的讲座片段。
第2段
1 .P: We spend a lot of time talking about notable European painters, but today I want to talk a few minutes about the paint itself. Before most European painters started using oil paint, they used either watercolor or egg tempera.
教授：我们花了很多时间讨论著名的欧洲画家，但今天我想花几分钟讲讲颜料本身。在大多数欧洲画家开始使用油画颜料之前，他们要么使用水彩颜料，要么使用蛋彩颜料（以蛋黄为媒介的颜料）。
2 .Now, the terms for the different types of paint refer to the liquid that the pigment, the color is suspended in. Most pigments don't start out as liquids. They come from minerals, plants, and other sources, so they have to be ground up and mixed with a liquid, water or oil or egg yolk primarily. Egg tempera is where you mix the pigment with diluted egg yolk to produce a thin paint. To make oil paint, you mix the pigment with oil and some kind of thinner like alcohol. After about 1500, most European artists were familiar with painting with oils.
现在，不同类型颜料的名称指的是颜料（也就是颜色）所悬浮的液体。大多数颜料一开始并不是液体状态。它们来源于矿物质、植物和其他物质，所以必须将其研磨，然后主要与水、油或蛋黄等液体混合。蛋彩颜料是把颜料和稀释的蛋黄混合制成的一种稀颜料。制作油画颜料则是把颜料与油以及酒精之类的稀释剂混合。大约在 1500 年之后，大多数欧洲艺术家都对使用油画颜料作画很熟悉了。
3 .S: So the Europeans invented oil painting?
学生：所以是欧洲人发明了油画吗？
4 .P: Well, there's evidence of oil painting in different parts of the world throughout history. What we do know is that in Europe, oil painting began in Northern Europe and spread south, and the place where it was first used systematically was in Flanders, part of what's now Belgium around the 1400s.
教授：嗯，历史上世界各地都有油画存在的证据。我们确定知道的是，在欧洲，油画起源于北欧，然后向南传播。15 世纪左右，油画首次在佛兰德斯（今比利时北部）被系统地使用。
5 .S: What made Flanders so special?
学生：佛兰德斯有什么特别之处呢？
6 .P: Well, this was a time when the spice trade was booming. Spices, oils, and other materials were being shipped into Flanders from all over through a place called Bruges, which was Flanders' main port city. Among the many spices shipped into Bruges was saffron from India, which was used to make yellow paint. And all kinds of oils were arriving too, walnut, linseed, white poppy. So artists now had access to all these new spices, oils, and other things, and they were highly motivated to experiment with these ingredients.
教授：嗯，当时香料贸易蓬勃发展。香料、油类和其他物资通过一个叫布鲁日的地方，从世界各地运往佛兰德斯，布鲁日是佛兰德斯的主要港口城市。运到布鲁日的众多香料中，有来自印度的藏红花，它被用来制作黄色颜料。各种各样的油也运到了这里，比如核桃油、亚麻籽油、白罂粟油。所以艺术家们现在能接触到这些新的香料、油类和其他物资，他们极有动力用这些材料进行试验。
7 .P: There are a couple of reasons why, any ideas?
教授：他们这么做有几个原因，大家能想到吗？
8 .S:To save money maybe?
学生：也许是为了省钱？
9 .P: Well, the ingredients weren't exactly cheap.
教授：嗯，这些材料可不便宜。
10 .S: Painters belonged to guilds at that time, right? Did it have something to do with these associations?
学生：当时画家们都加入了行会，对吧？这和这些组织有关吗？
11 .P: Yes, in fact, there were guilds for every trade, like the bakers' guild, the goldsmiths' guild, and the painters' guild.
教授：是的，事实上，每个行业都有行会，比如面包师行会、金匠行会，还有画家行会。
12 .Painting was also considered a trade. All the trades were monitored according to strict standards of craftsmanship. Each member of a guild had to progress through a rigorous education in the craft. And as with all the trades, technical expertise was valued above all. And for painters, it was no different. Artistic genius had little to do with anything. So in this sense, creating the perfect painting was regarded a little differently from baking bread, baking the perfect loaf of bread.
绘画也被视为一种行业。所有行业都依据严格的工艺标准进行监管。行会的每个成员都必须接受严格的技艺教育。和所有行业一样，技术专长被看得最为重要。对画家来说也是如此。艺术天赋在当时并不那么重要。从这个意义上说，创作一幅完美的画作和烘焙一条完美的面包，看待方式略有不同。
13 .For guild painters, the emphasis was on acquiring the technical know-how to render an image with near-photographic accuracy. It's no wonder, then, that painters were constantly looking for a medium to, say, capture the brilliance of a gold necklace or the subtle shadows in the folds of a red velvet cape. So you can see why there was an incentive to experiment with a new kind of paint.
对于行会画家而言，重点在于掌握技术诀窍，以便能近乎逼真地描绘出图像。所以也就难怪画家们一直在寻找一种媒介，比如用来捕捉金项链的光泽，或是红色天鹅绒披风褶皱处微妙的阴影。这样你就能明白为什么他们有动力去尝试新的颜料了。
14 .P: Also, Bruges was a rainy city filled with canals, so there was always a lot of moisture in the air. Naturally, painters were looking for ways to keep their paintings from deteriorating in the dampness. Oil paint was an improvement over egg tempera in that respect.
教授：此外，布鲁日是一个多雨且遍布运河的城市，所以空气中总是有很多湿气。自然而然地，画家们在寻找方法防止他们的画作在潮湿环境中受损。在这方面，油画颜料比蛋彩颜料更有优势。
15 .S: Oh so tempera wasn't used anymore?
学生：哦，所以蛋彩颜料不再被使用了吗？
16 .P: No. People still painted in tempera. It's good for bright colors, especially, some of our most famous paintings were done with egg tempera.
教授：不是的。人们仍然使用蛋彩颜料作画。它尤其适合表现明亮的色彩，一些非常著名的画作就是用蛋彩颜料绘制的。
17 .But there are some problems with it. Dark colors tend to look dull and muddy. Also, you usually have to paint everything in one sitting, because it's very hard to retouch the surface of a tempera painting once it's dried. But with oil, you don't have these problems. So, many artists gravitated toward this medium.
但是蛋彩颜料也存在一些问题。用它画出来的深色往往显得暗淡、污浊。而且，通常你必须一次性完成整幅画，因为蛋彩画一旦干了就很难修改画面。但油画颜料就不存在这些问题。所以，很多艺术家都倾向于使用这种绘画媒介。
18 .Now, interestingly, certain details of making oil paint were kept secret. It was the job of a workshop apprentice to grind and mix the exact amount of pigment with the exact amount of other ingredients, like oil and alcohol. The secret was not so much in the ingredients themselves as in the proportions that the workshop master told the apprentice to use. You can imagine the hundreds of variations for the different colors given the varied nature of the pigments, not to mention the interaction of these pigments with the different oils.
有趣的是，制作油画颜料的某些细节是保密的。工坊学徒的工作就是精确研磨并混合一定量的颜料和其他成分，比如油和酒精。秘密并不在于这些材料本身，而在于工坊师傅告诉学徒使用的材料比例。考虑到颜料的不同特性，你可以想象不同颜色的配方会有数百种变化，更不用说这些颜料与不同油类之间的相互作用了。