Enamelling on German Glass
We are now able to form some idea of the processes by which glass was made in Central Germany about the middle of the sixteenth century, and when we come to examine the glass itself by the aid of extant examples, it will be found that this is indeed the date from which the start must be made, for there are few pieces in our collections that can claim a greater antiquity.
It was apparently not long before this time that the Germans began to apply enamels to their drinking-vessels whether of glass or pottery. Mathesius (1562) speaks of enamelling as a new art. ‘The ready wit of man,’ he says, ‘is always finding something new; some have on the white glass painted all kinds of pictures and mottoes, and burnt them in, in the annealing oven,[[197]] as we find the “counterfeits” of great men and their arms painted upon the panes that are set in our windows.’ This is an important passage which confirms what we might otherwise be led to infer—namely, that the origin of the enamelling that we find on the beakers of the German renaissance must be sought, not in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century enamelled glass of Venice, but rather in the new method of colouring window-glass that was at this time spreading all over Germany. I refer to the highly finished pictures, painted in enamel colours on white glass and subsequently burned in, which were now replacing, especially for secular use, the true lead-mounted stained glass of the old church windows. It was an easy step to apply this method of decoration to the cylindrical surfaces of the great tankards and goblets from which the German people drank their beer. Now it is not in Northern or Central Germany that we find the best specimens of these enamelled ‘quarries.’ The finest examples come from the south, from Nuremberg, from Swabia, and above all from Switzerland, at that time the home of a distinguished school of glass painters. And the same may be said of the glasses, though this is a point that has been somewhat neglected until quite lately. Both the willkomm-humpen and the pass-gläser—the broad and narrow cylinders—found in Swiss and Bavarian collections are, as a rule, much more carefully decorated than the quaint but rude glasses of what we must vaguely call the central district. Unfortunately we have no means of more definitely determining the place of origin of the latter class of beakers; in fact it may be said generally of the glass made on both sides of the mountains that encircle Bohemia, that there is little to distinguish the productions of the different centres, however far apart they may lie.
GERMAN GLASS. WILLKOMM HUMPEN. ENAMELLED WITH THE EAGLE OF EMPIRE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Now it is not too much to affirm that, as a whole, the enamelling on German glass is in every way bad. The colours are opaque; when not crude they are muddy and dull. It is almost too high praise of them to say that they look as if they had been painted on in oil-colours. Take, for example, an average adler-humpen, such a one as the big beaker in the British Museum (Slade, No. 835). A mustardy yellow, that takes the place of the gilding that is absent in the main painting, is predominant; there is then an opaque blue, crude and unpleasant, and a dull maroon, which—and this is universally the case on these glasses—is the nearest approach we get to red. Apart from these colours we find only browns and drabs of undecided tints. So much for the main decoration; but if we now look carefully we find round the neck something that takes us back to Venice—a delicate scale pattern of fine powdered gold, and above this a line of beading with little pearls of various colours. This band of exotic ornament is seldom absent, at least in the earlier specimens.[[198]]
There is no need to say much of the shapes of these enamelled glasses, for they are almost invariably of a more or less cylindrical form, with a foot of the simplest character; covered glasses are comparatively rare. They may be divided for our purpose into the broader beakers (often with curved sides and sometimes of great capacity) on the one hand, and on the other the narrower straight-sided tall cylinders. Much ingenuity has been devoted by German writers to the identification of the names by which these glasses were known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they have attempted to distinguish between the spechter, the bröderlein, the Krautstrunk, the pass-glas, the humpen and the willkomm. On the other hand, the term wiederkomm or vidrecome, given by so many English and French writers to the large broad forms, is unknown in Germany, so that I think the expression may be definitely abandoned and replaced by the word humpen or willkomm humpen. Narren-gläser—fools’ glasses—says Mathesius, would be a better name for these huge beakers that a man can hardly lift. The tall, narrow cylindrical form, when divided by horizontal lines, is known as a pass-glas. The spechter of Mathesius has been identified with a glass of this shape, sometimes decorated with square nail-headed studs. These spechter came from the Spessart forest district (west of Würzburg), and they form, as it were, a link between the prunted green glass of the Rhine and the enamelled beakers of Central Germany.
There is a small group of enamelled glass of very uncertain origin which claims attention here. We are concerned with certain little ewers, either of colourless or more often of deep cobalt-blue glass; they are generally mounted in metal, but the handle is always of glass. There are several examples of these ewers in the British Museum, many of which bear dates ranging from 1577 to 1618. The cobalt-blue glass has, by Dr. Brinckmann, been traced back to the glass-houses of Neudeck Platten, on the Saxon-Bohemian frontier. In the treatment, however, of the enamels on these little jugs, we are reminded of some of the work executed by the Altarists in France. The enamelling is of a somewhat more pleasing character than that which we find on the big beakers; white, yellow, green, and red are applied without shading. A favourite subject is a stag-hunt or the coursing of a hare, and at the side is often found a graceful lily of the valley[[199]] ([Plate XL.] 2).
1. ENAMELLED BEAKER
GERMAN, ABOUT 1600
2. ENAMELLED JUG WITH PEWTER LID
GERMAN, END OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
To return to our broad cylindrical glasses—the huge humpen and the smaller kanne, both of which indeed sometimes take the form of a barrel or a truncated cone—it is usual, on the basis of the decoration, to divide these beakers into the following classes:—
1. The Reichs-adler Humpen. On these, the double-headed eagle, displayed, with imperial crown, occupies nearly the whole surface of the glass. A big crucifix covers the breast of the bird, though this is replaced in some examples by the ball of empire. The arms of the seven electors and of the forty-eight members of the Heilige Römische Reich are arranged in a definite order along the outstretched wing feathers[[200]]([Plate XXXIX.]).
2. The Kur-fürsten Humpen. Here, on the upper zone, the emperor on horseback rides in front of the three spiritual electors—the four lay princes follow below. In other cases the kaiser sits on his throne, with the electors on either side.[[201]]
3. The Fichtelgebirge glasses, on which a mountain landscape is rudely indicated. None of these glasses can be attributed to an earlier date than the second half of the seventeenth century. A good example in the British Museum shows the Ochsenkopf, one of the highest peaks of the district, as well as the four rivers that issue from its slopes. A padlock hanging by a gold chain over the mountain points to the treasures therein contained: as an often-repeated inscription says:—An Eisen, Erz und Holz, thut mann viel von ihm ziehen. Many of these beakers, and perhaps others of a similar character, may be referred to the glass-houses of Bischofsgrün, which are situated at the foot of the Ochsenkopf.
In spite of the crudity of the enamels and the rudeness of the design, it is impossible to deny that there is a certain attraction in the intensely German character of the decoration on these three groups of glasses, which thus form a class by themselves. They smack of the soil and of the simple German folk who made them. The earliest example known, an adler-humpen, is dated 1547, and differs little in the quality of the enamel from the later specimens, which range down to the beginning of the eighteenth century.[[202]]
There are in the British Museum two remarkable tankards which, though they do not fall under any of the above divisions, may well be mentioned here. On one we see an elaborate hunting scene: in the centre the net is spread and the game is being driven in by dogs and beaters ([Plate XLI.]). On the other is a strangely crude representation of the Last Supper, in the arrangement of which, however, Leonardo’s famous design may still be traced.
GERMAN GLASS. WILLKOMM HUMPEN. ENAMELLED WITH HUNTING SCENES
ABOUT 1600, A.D.
Before treating of the big glasses painted at Dresden and of those of the South German school, I may well say something of the second class of cylindrical vessels, of which the most important sub-division is formed by the pass-gläser, the tall narrow beakers divided by stringings of glass or by enamelled rings into a series of zones. These glasses played an important part in the drinking contests of the time. It would seem—to judge from the lengthy verses, commencing and ending in all cases with the word vivat, found on many of them—that it was required of the drinker to swallow at one draught the liquid contents of each zone, neither more nor less. At other times the drinking was apparently regulated by the dealing of cards. There is a remarkable example of the typical pass-glas at South Kensington: it is divided into twelve zones by quilled threadings of glass. The simple decoration of hearts, roses, and wreaths, as well as the long inscription, is painted in white enamel.
A somewhat later group of enamelled glasses may be traced to Dresden, to the Hof-kellerei of the Saxon electors, whose arms these glasses bear. The painting on them, though of no great artistic merit, is somewhat less rude, more ‘urbane,’ in fact, than that on the previous examples. They form, indeed, a transition to the carefully executed Nuremberg glasses. There are several examples of these Saxon beakers in the British Museum. A fine covered willkomm (Slade, No. 843) bears the portrait of the elector John George as well as of the four Saxon dukes, all booted and spurred, and with plumed hats on their heads. This beaker is dated 1656, the year of the elector’s death. Another, a pass-glas (Slade, No. 847), has the arms and initials of Augustus the Strong, king of Poland (1697-1733); the four zones into which this glass is divided, each holding about half a pint, are indicated by numerals, calling to mind, says Mr. Nesbitt, the peg tankards of the sixteenth century. Another example, dated 1658, also from the Slade collection (No. 851), a goblet with the arms of the elector of Saxony, encircled by the garter, is remarkable for the glass being externally striped with opaque white bands in obvious imitation of the vetro di trina. There is a somewhat obscure reference to German glass so decorated in the often-quoted sermon of Mathesius, and of this passage much has been made by German writers.[[203]] I doubt whether the imitation was in any case more than superficial, and I do not think that, at least before the middle of the seventeenth century, any example of German glass can be pointed to which is really built up with rods as in the case of the true Venetian lace glass.
There is a large class of painted beakers on which the decoration has reference to the occupation of the original owner, and among these the zunft-becher, the guild or corporation glasses, hold an important place. These glasses date, without exception, from a comparatively late time, when among the upper classes the new engraved crystal glass had taken the place of the enamelled ware; already by the end of the seventeenth century the latter had come to be regarded as somewhat bourgeois in character. However that may be, these humpen bearing the arms of the guilds and quaint representations of the trades and industries are among the most interesting of their class. Many of these Innungs gläser are still preserved in the halls of the trade guilds. Herr von Czihak mentions several instances of this in Breslau and other Silesian towns.
In Southern Germany the Venetian influence was not only more early felt, but, what is of greater importance, it continued in play for a longer time, being continually renewed by fresh importations of the Italian glass. The art-loving dukes of Bavaria, Albrecht V. and his successor Wilhelm V., in the second half of the sixteenth century, did much to promote the manufacture of glass on improved methods. Strangely enough, however, we find that it was from Antwerp, not from Italy, that the assistance came in the first case; and it was to compete with Italian glass imported from Venice by way of Antwerp that Bernhart Schwarz, a glass-maker of the latter town, erected a furnace—at Landshut, on the Isar. Scarpaggiato, the Venetian, who came later, was engaged, in the first place, to make window-glass and mirrors. He is stated, however, to have been a master of the art of making vasi a reticelli and a ritorti of both white and coloured glass.
At Hall, near Innsbruck, some remarkable imitations of Venetian glass were made in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. In the Imperial Museum at Vienna there are many specimens of this Tyrolese glass, much of it scratched with the diamond and heavily gilt. There may be seen a goblet made by the art-loving Archduke Ferdinand, the husband of Philippine Welser.
As I have already said, it was in the towns of South Germany—Swabian and Ducal Bavarian—as well as in Switzerland, that the new art of painting window-glass with enamel colours was carried to the highest perfection, and we can trace the influence of this school of painters upon the decoration of the enamelled beakers preserved in the museums of Zürich, Munich, Augsburg, and other South German and Swiss cities. But it is to the Franconian Nuremberg, which, though further to the north, fell under the same influences, that we must turn to find the most brilliant work of this southern school. Here we come upon the family of the Hirschvogels, so many of whom during the course of the seventeenth century were famed as designers of glass for windows, and we have evidence from documents that have been preserved that the younger members at least of the family painted on drinking-glasses with enamel colours (Friedrich, Alt-Deutsche Gläser, p. 157).
It is chiefly on the ground of the coats-of-arms found on a few examples that we are enabled to attribute to Nuremberg artists a variety of enamelled glass which differs in many respects from the heavily painted humpen and pass glasses of which I have been speaking. In the British Museum may be seen certain tall cylindrical beakers which may be taken as examples of this South German glass. The metal is colourless but somewhat grey, and, as in the northern glasses, a delicate scale pattern of gold with scattered pearls of enamel forms a ring below the upper margin. But now we find the gold used freely in the rest of the decoration also, replacing the coarse yellow enamel of the northern beakers. The colours are purer and more effectively combined, and we see among them a green of good quality. In the case of the two beakers from the Slade collection in the British Museum, the figure of Jacob Praun on one glass, on the other that of his wife, stand detached in the field; there is no other decoration apart from the heraldic bearings of this Nuremberg family (these are on the other side of the glass) and the above-mentioned gold band. I may add that the Nuremberg enamellers showed a superlative skill in the treatment of these elaborate coats-of-arms backed with fluttering mantlings.
Of the larger humpen and pass glasses painted with allegorical or sometimes comic subjects, we have no good examples in our English collections. A beaker in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg, showing the ten ages of man in as many compartments, is an exceptionally good example of such work. The drawing and composition of the subjects on these larger South German glasses are carefully carried out—the colouring, however, is generally poor; in the later examples, indeed, it tends to pass over to the monochrome or grisaille class, of which I must say a word before finishing with these enamelled wares.
The school of grisaille painters on drinking-glasses, founded towards the middle of the seventeenth century by Johann Schaper, is in many ways closely associated with the contemporary engravers on glass. Like the latter, the grisaille painters followed the pseudo-classical, the ‘Italianising’ style, rather than the old German traditions. Schaper, who came from Harburg on the Elbe, settled in Nuremberg in 1640, and died there in 1670. His manner of work, founded on copper-plate engravings, was much admired at the time, and he is in the next century mentioned among the famous artists of Nuremberg by Doppelmayr in his Nachricht von den Nürnbergischen Künstlern. Schaper, he says, ‘auf die Trinkgläser ... gar delicat mahlte,’ burning in his work afterwards so successfully that he surpassed all his contemporaries. He painted—round the sides of small tumblers and wine-glasses, for the most part—landscapes, figures, and heraldic bearings, either in black or a warm sepia, signing his work with his initials. There are some small examples of the glass enamelled by him at South Kensington. The large goblet in the British Museum (Slade, No. 860), painted with a cavalry combat, is of a considerably later date, but it shows that Schaper’s influence continued into the eighteenth century; in this case, however, the grisaille is heightened in places by touches of colour. The tall pass-glass (Slade, No. 859), painted with an elaborate procession celebrating the birth of a Bavarian prince, belongs, on the other hand, to quite another school. It is dated 1662, and Schaper’s influence had probably not reached Munich by that time.