Mosque Lamps
I now come to the Mosque Lamps, and here a more numerous family has to be dealt with. In those instances where the lamps can be traced back to well-known buildings in Cairo, or again when they bear the names of Memlook sultans or of great officers of their court, a date can generally be assigned without much hesitation.
A small lamp in the Arab Museum at Cairo, decorated with red lines—apart from this there are only a few jewel-like spots of enamel—bears a dedication which may be referred to either the beginning or the end of the thirteenth century; in either case this lamp is probably the earliest known to us (Schmoranz, Pl. XV.). Next in order come those bearing the name of the Sultan Malek Nasir (the successor of Kalaoun), whose long reign extended (with some interruptions) from 1293 to 1341. On these lamps the polychrome decoration is already fully developed: along with them must be placed those bearing the name of several of this sultan’s emirs. To the reign of the Sultan Baybars II. (1309-1310)[[121]] probably belongs the beautiful lamp of deep cobalt blue glass that Mr. Pierpont Morgan obtained from the Mannheim collection. There is only one other example, as far as I know, of enamelling on a dark blue ground,—a lamp of nearly the same date formerly belonging to M. Goupil.[[122]] The only specimen apparently in our English collections of a lamp of so early a date is the beautifully enamelled example at South Kensington (Myers bequest), the inscription on which probably refers to the same Baybars.
By far the greater number of these lamps date from the latter half of the fourteenth century. We have seen that the famous mosque built by Sultan Hassan (1347-61) has provided numerous examples to our collections. In these we already find less delicacy and detail in the decoration, but the broad and effective treatment is well suited to the position in which these lamps were placed, suspended as they were from the arcades of spacious mosques.
The period of decline that set in after this time is usually associated with the advance of Timur (Tamerlane). When in the year 1400 Damascus was taken by that ruthless conqueror, we are told that he transplanted to his new capital of Samarkand whole regiments of skilled Syrian artisans, and among these the glass-workers are definitely mentioned. Others of these men may have fled to Egypt; in any case the art lingered on in that country for another hundred years. According to Schmoranz, the latest known example of this school of Oriental enamelled glass is a lamp from the mosque of Kaït Bey (1467-1495), now in the Arab Museum at Cairo. In this specimen we see the art in the lowest stage of decay.[[123]]
MOSQUE LAMP FROM CAIRO
FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The rise and fall of this great school of enamellers on glass covers but a brief period—a glorious interlude in the long story of the glass-workers of Egypt and Syria. In the latter country after this time, they appear in a measure to have fallen back upon the older and more primitive methods, handed down, perhaps, from the days of Phœnician and Egyptian domination. I have already spoken more than once of the still existing glass-works near Hebron on the high plateau to the west of the Dead Sea.
There remain, however, to be mentioned one or two mosque lamps which depart from the normal type.
In the lamp (now at South Kensington), apparently of green jade-like glass, which was brought with so many others from Cairo by the late Captain Myers, the effect is obtained by a wash of green translucent enamel over the whole of the inner surface. The outside is covered with an effective but somewhat summary decoration in gold and red lines, without further enamelling. The Sultan named in the laudatory inscription may be either Sultan Hassan or his father Nasir.
Another exceptional lamp now in the museum at Cairo is well illustrated in Schmoranz’s great work (Pl. xi.). This is a smallish lamp of green cloudy glass; the whole of the body and neck, except a plain band at the top, is worked into shallow, wavy ribs. It bears no enamel, but on the surface there are traces of the gilding that formerly covered it: this lamp came from a mosque built in 1363. At South Kensington are two small lamps of colourless glass of somewhat abnormal form without decoration of any kind.
I must finally mention the charming little lamp from the Myers collection (now at South Kensington) which, it is stated, was found in a Christian monastery in Syria ([Plate XXXIV.] 1). The thin clear glass, with pearly patina, the graceful, vase-like form, and, above all, the sparingly applied but quite exceptional decoration, in which the human figure finds a place, distinguish this lamp from the ordinary Cairene type. In this case the treatment of the figures, which, as I have said, are never found on true mosque lamps, closely resembles that on the inlaid metal-ware made at Mosul in the thirteenth century.[[124]]
And this carries us back to the question of the origin of this enamelled glass, and we are brought face to face with quite a number of interesting problems which can only be indicated here. That the application of enamels to glass by the Saracens was prior to the use of similar materials on porcelain by the Chinese, I have already mentioned. It is, indeed, not impossible that this method of decoration may have been suggested to the Chinese potters by specimens of the Saracenic glass which, as we now know, found their way to China at an early date. The use of enamels of very similar constitution on metals had, however, been known in certain parts of Europe since the first century of our era if not earlier, and the cloisonné enamels of the Byzantines had long been famous. In this connection, too, we must not forget the vitrum plumbeum with which the Syrian Jews manufactured artificial gems. It is to materials of this kind, true lead-fluxed enamels, that we must look for the origin of the decoration on Saracenic glass, rather than to the paint-like colours occasionally used by the Romans and Byzantines.
We may safely associate the apparently sudden appearance of this richly decorated enamelled glass with the change that came over the other arts of the Saracens about this time, and Dr. Lane-Poole is probably right in connecting this change with the rise of the Kurdish and Tartar families who played so important a part in the history of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Art of the Saracens, p. 127 seq.). Nur-ed-din, who ruled at Damascus and Aleppo in the twelfth century, came from the stock of the Beni Zenky, who adorned their coinage with figure subjects taken from both Byzantine and Persian sources. His successor, the great Saladin, came of the Ayubi stock that had ruled in Mesopotamia. Both families brought with them the traditions of Sassanian art and a complete freedom from the religious scruples of the earlier Semitic rulers. A little later the great Monghol invasion of Genghis Khan, who founded a new dynasty in Persia, opened the way to other influences, this time from the Far East. During all this period, the civilisation of the Frankish West was fighting its way into Palestine and Northern Syria. It would be difficult to find a parallel case in history—a case, I mean, of as many exotic influences as were now brought to bear upon Syria and Egypt, at work at the same time and in the same country. In both lands one result was an outburst of artistic splendour. This, in the first country, came to a premature end with Timur’s devastating campaign. In Egypt this glorious period lasted somewhat longer; but already in the fifteenth century the Memlook sultans had returned to the stricter rule of the faith, and by the next century, when after a period of turmoil Egypt fell under Turkish rule, the short-lived art of enamelling on glass was already extinct.
How completely this was so we may learn from an interesting document discovered some time since by the late M. Yriarte in the Venetian archives—amid the inexhaustible store now preserved in the old convent behind the Frari Church (La Vie d’un Patricien de Venise au XVIme Siècle, p. 147 seq.). In the year 1569, Marc Antonio Barbaro—that type of a Venetian noble, the liberal patron of artists and writers—was ambassador at Constantinople. The document in question is a despatch addressed by him to the Venetian senate; on it he has drawn in outline two designs for lamps—one a somewhat depressed version of our old mosque type, the other what M. Yriarte calls a ‘godet-lampe’ of elongated form,—in fact, a version of our ‘spear-butt’ or cup-lamp suitable for fitting into a wooden or metal frame. Barbaro urges the senate to see to the execution at Murano, with the greatest care, of as many as nine hundred pieces after these designs, for the demand came from no less a person than the Grand Vizier himself. There is no reference, in the order for these lamps, to any enamelling: those that are not plain (schietti) are to be decorated in the Venetian way (a reticelli).[[125]]
The old form was, however, kept up in those beautiful mosque lamps of fayence, Rhodian or Damascan in style, of which we have a few rare examples in our museums; these, I think, were made in the days of Turkish rule, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
I shall return in a subsequent chapter to the later glass of the Mohammedans—that of Persia and of India—glass that was for the most part influenced by Venetian models, in part even made by Venetian workmen: it would be hardly possible to treat of this glass before we have said something of its European prototype. We know practically nothing of any mediæval Saracenic glass other than the enamelled ware of Syria and Egypt. The little bowl of amber-yellow glass in the British Museum, enamelled with the figure of an angel, was considered by Franks to be Persian ware of the fifteenth century ([Plate XXVII.] 1). With it we may compare the already mentioned sphere from a lamp-chain in the same collection which is of very similar glass. The decoration of the first object is distinctly Persian, but its origin may be sought, perhaps, in the Tabriz district or even further north in Georgia, rather than in the more southern and eastern districts where, under Venetian influence, a glass industry sprang up in later days.
DRINKING BOWL
PERSIAN OR SYRIAN. FIFTEENTH OR SIXTEENTH CENTURY
SPHERICAL ORNAMENT FOR ATTACHMENT TO CHAIN SUSPENDING MOSQUE LAMP
PERSIAN OR SYRIAN. PROBABLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY
A few fragments of glass have been brought from excavations made on the site of the old city of Rhé, or Rhages, which was destroyed by Hulaku Khan in 1250. But there is little to be found among these that has any bearing upon the interesting question of a mediæval Persian glass industry, nor do I think that the evidence of so early a date for all these fragments is by any means conclusive. In the rubbish-heaps of Fostat or Old Cairo, which, like those of Rhé, have yielded so many interesting potsherds that throw light on the early history of pottery, many pieces of glass have been found, among them some fragments of bracelets. These are of two types, in one case of the primitive Hebron character, in the other built up of twisted rods of reticelli glass,—these last may undoubtedly be referred to Venice. For the rest, these Fostat fragments point to a local manufacture of somewhat rough glass of brilliant hues, but the enamelled glass of which we have treated in this chapter is, as far as I have had opportunity of judging, conspicuous by its absence.
CHAPTER XI
THE GLASS OF VENICE—THE ORIGINS—BEADS
Before taking up the subject of Venetian glass, it will be well to say something of another early Italian centre of the industry. It is only of recent years that the important part played in the sixteenth century by the glass-workers from L’Altare, in spreading the new methods through France and the low countries, has been made manifest.
L’Altare is a little Ligurian town, situated a few miles to the north of Savona. It belonged in the Middle Ages to the Marquis of Montferrat, and the relation of that family both with France and with the East should not be forgotten in this connection. According to the local tradition, the glass industry was established as far back as the eleventh century by a body of immigrants from Normandy, and a French origin has been found for the names of the families employed in the glass-works.[[126]] At a later date, probably in the fourteenth century, other workmen came from Murano, so that when by the end of the fifteenth century the skilled glass-workers of L’Altare began to seek employment in foreign countries, they became the principal agency by which the newer methods of the Venetians were introduced into Northern Europe. These Altarists must indeed have been a thorn in the side of their Muranese rivals, for, abandoning the stringent regulations by which the Venetian government sought to hinder the emigration of their glass-workers, at L’Altare the self-elected consuls of the craft farmed out their men to foreign states and towns, receiving a substantial payment in return.[[127]]
I do not know of any specimens of glass, either of mediæval or renaissance date, that can be attributed with certainty to the town. At the present day, however, L’Altare is an active centre of the glass industry. Signor Bordoni gives a list of thirteen old families—he himself belongs to one of them—who still carry on the craft. These houses have agencies all over Northern Italy and even in South America.
Glass has been made at Venice, or more strictly at Murano, for at least seven hundred years; but what we especially think of as Venetian glass—the graceful vessels of endless variety of form, thin and diaphanous, in which the skill of the glass-blower attains its most complete expression—these were the produce of a comparatively short period, of the sixteenth century above all. During the last fifty or sixty years of the preceding century the Venetians in their enamelled glass were able to give expression to the spirit of the quattro-cento, but of the glass that was made before that time practically nothing is known. After the end of the sixteenth, or at latest the middle of the next century, the art enters into a period of gradual decline, which continued until the partial revival of our own day. But before that decline had set in, Venetian glass-workers had spread over Western Europe, and had revolutionised the art of glass-making. The history of modern glass begins with that of the Venetian cristallo in the sixteenth century.
It is to the Venetian archives that one must turn for information if the attempt be made to trace the early history of the glass industry of that city, and these archives have been explored by a succession of native inquirers.[[128]]
For the earlier periods the negative evidence is of some importance. There is no reference of any kind to the manufacture of glass before the thirteenth century,[[129]] although by this time a great part of the interior of St. Mark’s had been covered with mosaics. Like the enamels of the Pala D’Oro, we may probably look upon the earlier Venetian mosaics as of Byzantine origin. After the capture of Constantinople in 1204, the Venetians obtained a firmer grip upon the trade of the Eastern Mediterranean. Their factories had long been established on the coast of Syria. ‘When Sidon fell,’ says Mr. Horatio F. Brown, ‘the Venetians received from Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, in return for their assistance, a market-place, a district, and a church. This was in fact the nucleus of a colony living under special treaty capitulations’ (Cambridge Renaissance, vol. i.). This happened early in the twelfth century. I shall have something to say later on concerning the relations of the Venetians with the Latin principalities of Northern Syria towards the end of the next century, when the republic engaged to pay the ‘dhime’ for the broken glass that they exported. It was during this period, and under such influences, that the manufacture of glass was established in the republic.[[130]]
Early in the thirteenth century there is evidence of the existence of a guild of glass-blowers. In 1224, twenty-nine members of the Ars Friolaria were fined for breaking the rules of the trade. In 1268, the chronicler Martius da Cavale tells us, the maestri vitrai Muranesi, on the accession of the Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo, bore in procession ‘ricche girlande di perle ... e guastade ed oricanni ed altrettali vetrami gentili’: water-bottles and scent-flasks and other such graceful objects of glass.
In 1279 we hear of German pedlars at Venice—Todeschi qui portant vitra ad dorsum—but each man was only permitted to carry off ten lire worth of glass at a time.
Meantime, as in other mediæval towns, the question of allowing dangerous trades to be carried on within the city bounds became a pressing one at Venice. The newly constituted Maggior Consiglio—it was soon after the famous firmata—issued a decree ‘quod fornaces de vitro in quibus laborantur laboraria vitrea’ should be all destroyed within the state and see of the Rivo Alto. But this apparently was found to be too extreme a measure, for in the next year the decree was modified so as to allow of the manufacture of small objects (Verixelli—the French verroterie) in little furnaces (fornelli) under certain conditions, and this modified regulation remained in force until the eighteenth century. The privileged position of Murano, which lay outside the see of Venice, was thus firmly established.
About this time, too, we hear of furnaces worked by expatriated Venetians at Treviso, Ferrara, Padua, and Bologna, where factories had been already established, sometimes under treaty with Venice. It will be remembered that as yet the republic had no territory on the mainland of Italy.
There have been some differences of opinion as to what kind of glass was produced at this time in Venice—in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, I mean. Without prejudging the question as to whether anything in the nature of enamelled glass was yet known, we have evidence for the following statements:—that the preparation of various descriptions of beads constituted at that time, as indeed it has ever since, the main staple of the industry; that in the second place, the blowing of hollow ware for general use already gave occupation to a separate guild of workmen; and that finally the members of both these guilds, together with the makers of the rui—the little panes of thick green glass (similar to our ‘bull’s eyes’) still to be seen in the windows of many old palaces in Venice—were devoting themselves to perfecting certain new discoveries. These related above all to the manufacture of mirrors of glass, backed with lead, of which I have already said something. Again, the making of lenses, the oglarii di vitro or lapides ad legendum, now became a distinct industry. It was at this time (for instance in the year 1300) that we find the Cristallai di Cristallo di Rocca complaining of the competition of the glass-makers. These carvers and polishers of rock crystal were already established as an important guild in Venice; they looked upon the glass-workers as intruders. On the other hand, the efforts of the latter to imitate the nobler material had no doubt an important bearing on the development of Venetian glass, for it was as a consequence of their success in making an absolutely white transparent ‘metal’ that the Venetian glass-makers first acquired a European fame. It was this cristallo di Venezia that revolutionised at a later time the glass of Europe. At an early date, in spite of edicts forbidding its sale to the Todeschi, the unworked material, en masse, found its way into Germany, there to be worked up after remelting. Already in the fourteenth century the water-power of Alpine streams had been applied to the grinding and polishing of glass, as, for example, at Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Tyrol. The glass-makers at the same time, or a little later, came into competition with the carvers of jasper and agate, which stones they imitated by means of ingenious combinations of coloured glass (smalti).
VENETIAN GLASS. THE ALDREVANDINI BEAKER
CIRCA 1300, A.D.
So far there is no evidence that the newly developed art of enamelling on glass had passed from the Syrian coast to the Lagoons. The Venetian glass-makers were still working on other lines, and with other aims. In view, however, of the close commercial intercourse of the Venetians with the coast cities of Syria,[[131]] we may well imagine that some attempts were made to imitate the brilliant enamels of the East. But the successful handling of these colours was not a matter to be easily learned. There were as yet no handbooks to teach the composition of the coloured fluxes, to say nothing of the various devices and ‘wrinkles’ to be mastered before the enamels could be successfully applied to the surface of the glass. In the Aldrevandini beaker in the British Museum we may perhaps see an attempt to overcome these difficulties. The ‘metal’ itself is here quite of a Venetian type, thin and absolutely white, although disfigured by the black specks so characteristic of early Venetian glass. There is no trace of Oriental influence in the decoration; the three heater-shaped shields have charges—keys, antlers, and fesses—that have been traced back to certain Swabian towns, but the inscription in Gothic letters—✠ MAGISTER ALDREVANDIN’ ME FECI—points to a Venetian origin. On the ground of the heraldry and of the inscription, a date of about the year 1300 may be ascribed to this goblet. The enamels, it should be noted, are of the poorest description; all the well-known Saracenic colours are imitated, it is true, but with a striking want of success.
Compare with this goblet the cup from the Hope collection that stands near it in the Glass Room. The glass is thicker than in the last example, it is of a slightly greenish tint, and contains a few elongated bubbles. The decoration is in its way masterly: on either side of a throne on which is seated the Virgin with the Child in her lap, stands an angel holding a tall candle; beyond are the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul. As to the style of the decoration, it is to my mind distinctly Western; the figures might be taken from a French missal of the thirteenth century. The Arte Francisca was no doubt coming into favour in Venice at this time, but even in the fourteenth century it was regarded as something exotic, and I doubt if it was as yet practised by Venetian craftsmen who, in the minor arts, long adhered to Byzantine models. When we come to examine the technique of the enamels, we are at once struck with their resemblance to those on the Saracenic glass of the period. We have here the work of one who was master of his craft; above all, the quality of the blue enamel should be noted and compared with that on the Aldrevandini goblet.
I think, then, that both the glass and enamel of this cup are the work of Syrian craftsmen, possibly working at Venice, but more probably at the court of one of the Frankish princes who held fiefs in Syria during the thirteenth century,—at that of Bohemond VI. possibly, prince of Antioch and Count of Tripoli, or of his son Bohemond VII., who celebrated his marriage with a noble lady from Champagne only a few years before his expulsion by the Saracens. It was in 1277, under the rule of the former, that the treaty was drawn up that contains the often-quoted—and misquoted—words, ‘Et si Venitien trait verre brizé de la vile, il est tenuz de payer le dhime.’ What is more likely than that such a goblet may have been made by some Jewish or perhaps Christian glass-worker for a nobleman of this thoroughly French court?[[132]]
Such an origin may help to account for the fact, otherwise somewhat difficult to explain, that this goblet is a unique example of its class. If the Venetians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were complete masters of the art of enamel, how comes it that no other example of the art at all comparable in excellence to this glass has come down to us? No one, I think, now believes in the Venetian origin of the hanap de voirre en façon de Damas, of the glass vessels de l’ouvrage de Damas, or peintes à la morisque mentioned in the inventories of the French princes of the fourteenth century. These were evidently decorated in an Oriental style. We must also remember that before the end of the thirteenth century the Christian rulers were finally driven out of Syria; there was therefore only a brief period during which such a goblet decorated with Christian motives could have been made in the East.
When some century and a half later the Venetians began freely to decorate their glass with enamels, we note an entire change both in the colours and in the nature of the fluxes used. To this point I shall return later on, but I may call attention here to the almost total absence of Oriental influence in the designs found on the Venetian enamelled glass of the fifteenth century. This is the more remarkable when we remember that at this time as regards other arts—their inlaid metal-ware and the stamped leather of their bookbindings, to give but two instances—not only is this influence strong, but we know that Oriental craftsmen were at work at Venice. I think that one simple explanation may be given of this apparent anomaly, namely, that by the time the Italians took to the practice of enamelling their glass, that art was practically extinct in the East.
It was during the course of the fourteenth century apparently that the glass-workers organised themselves into separate guilds or arti, governed by the rules set out on the Matricola or Mariegola. It is from these matricole that the little we know of the Venetian glass of this time is derived.[[133]] The glass-workers now obtained many important privileges, and the town of Murano was granted a considerable measure of self-government; but it was not till the year 1445 that these rights were fully established. Each arte was governed by an elected guastoldo, assisted by three superintendents, to whom it fell among other duties to bring the petitions and complaints of the glass-workers before the Great and the Lesser Council at Venice. Not the least important duty of the guastoldo and his lieutenants or compagni was the periodical selection of the proof-pieces—the prove—to be made by the apprentices of the various arti before they could claim rank as masters. These tasks were inscribed in the Mariegole, and from them Signor Cecchetti, in his often-quoted paper, has extracted many examples. To give an instance: the Maestri di Rulli (Rui, small window-panes) had among other things to make ‘due occhi di bo,’ an early instance of the term ‘bull’s eyes.’ But the technical terms employed in most cases render the interpretation very difficult. Some of the strange-shaped vases in our collections may not improbably be examples of such proof-pieces.
After this time the working year—the period during which the furnaces were kept constantly alight—was confined to nine months; this was afterwards prolonged to forty-four weeks. There was, however, plenty of work to do during the summer vacation, which ended on October 1, for the furnaces had now to be repaired if not rebuilt.
The number of separate arti or guilds appears to have varied, and it was not till the fifteenth century perhaps that the divisions that were maintained until the last days of the republic were finally established. But at an early date the fialai and cristallai were separated from the specchiai or mirror-makers on the one hand, and on the other from the perlai—the bead-makers, more especially the makers of the ‘canes’ and pastes for beads; a fourth guild, too, was already established for the stazioneri, or retail vendors of glass. At a later date the perlai were separated into two guilds, of which one included the makers of conterie, the ordinary beads of commerce, while the other comprised, besides the makers of the canne for the large beads, those who prepared enamels in cakes for exportation. When we call to mind that, apart from these latter purely Muranese guilds, whose members were chiefly concerned with the preparation of the materials, the actual makers of the beads lived for the most part under separate organisation at Venice, it will be evident what an important part the bead industry has played in that city. The government probably encouraged the subdivision of labour, which made it more difficult for single workmen to establish glass-works in foreign countries.
In fact, the manufacture and export of beads have at all times formed the very backbone of the Venetian glass industry. We cannot trace this trade further back than the beginning of the fourteenth century—by means, that is, of definite documentary evidence—but by that time a fleet of galleys was yearly despatched, on the one hand to the Black Sea, on the other to Flanders and the Thames; subsidiary centres for distribution were established at the principal ports, and these beads already form an important element in the cargo.
Unlike the larger articles of blown glass, the strings of beads were in every way convenient articles of commerce, easily packed and easily valued and counted. So much was this the case that the name conterie[[134]] (compare our word ‘counters’) was early adopted as a general term for the commoner kinds of beads.
Our English tongue is above all poor in words that can be used in the description of works of art. For apt expressions with which to indicate specialities of manufacture, varieties of shape or shades of colour, recourse must continually be had, however unwillingly on the part of the writer, to the French language. But in one case, at least, we have our revenge. We possess in the word ‘bead’[[135]] a convenient term, of which the exact equivalent, strangely enough, exists in no other language. Nothing can be more inconvenient and more likely to lead to misconception than the use of the word ‘pearl,’ or ‘false pearl,’ in this general sense, and yet no term more definite has been found in either the French or the German language. In Italian the use of the term conterie is confined to certain classes of beads. The only fault, from our point of view, to be found with our English word is that it may be applied to objects made of other materials than glass. A term of very similar origin—‘paternosters’—was formerly employed for a certain class of large beads in France and Italy, but the use of it has never become general.
We have seen that towards the end of the thirteenth century the cristallai di cristallo di rocca fell foul of the glass-workers of Murano, and induced the authorities to forbid the imitation of their work in the inferior material. Not the least important of the productions of these workers in rock crystal and other hard stones were the beads for use in the rosaries (to use a word of later introduction)—the paternostri.
We know, too, that some such prohibition as that referred to was revoked in 1510; and the ground for this change of policy is found in the fact that for some time the Germans had been in the habit of carrying to their own country the ‘canes’[[136]] of glass, which they there cut and polished to form paternostri. These beads, re-imported into Venice, found their way ultimately to all parts of the world.
The Venetians, we must remember, at an early date, long before they had acquired territory on the mainland, had established factories at Treviso, at Belluno, and along the upper course of the river Piave. It is probable that advantage was taken of the abundant water-power to establish in these towns mills for the grinding and cutting of their glass. This industry, forbidden for a time at Murano, may have been carried on in a more or less clandestine manner.[[137]] It was through this country, too, that the German traders passed, and a link between the trans-Alpine and the Italian glass industries was thus early formed.
The starting-point in the manufacture of beads is a rod or cane of glass: according as this cane is hollow or solid, the manufacture is carried on by radically distinct methods.
In the case of the hollow cane or tube, we start from a ‘gathering’ at the end of the blowing-iron; this gathering is slightly inflated to form an incipient paraison, and a rod of iron is attached to the further extremity. This rod is seized by a boy—the tirador—who runs with it at full speed so as to elongate the glass as much as possible before it has time to cool; the thin tube, or canna, thus formed may, it is said, be as much as 150 feet in length. This tube, broken into rods of convenient lengths, then passes into the hands of another set of workmen, living for the most part in Venice. The rods are now carefully sorted, as to size, by women—the cernatrici—and handed over to the cutter, who, seated at a bench, cuts off equal lengths by passing the rod between a blade or chisel held in the hand, and a similar tool fixed in the bench, the size of the fragments being regulated by means of the scontro, a semi-cylindrical block of steel. If the object was to manufacture the little cylindrical bugles or jais, the bead—if so it may be called—is now completed. But in the case of a normal bead, the edges had now to be rounded. With this object the aperture of the little tubes had first to be filled with some infusible substance; this was done by rolling them in the hand with a finely ground mixture of lime and charcoal. They were now placed along with a quantity of sand in a tubular iron receptacle, which was rotated over the furnace.[[138]] By this means the angular edges were rounded off. The beads were then sifted from the sand and shaken up in a bag to remove the material with which the tubes had been plugged; finally they were sorted into various sizes by means of a sieve, and, in the case of spherical beads, those of irregular shape were eliminated by rolling them on an inclined table. It only remained for the lustratori to give them a final polish by shaking them up in a sack with bran.
This was the process adopted for the smaller beads—the conterie—which, before packing, were threaded on a string by girls. The larger perle, such as the perle a rosette, or chevron beads, of which I shall speak presently, had to be ground into shape on the wheel. Any ornament or design that appears on these beads depended of course upon the constitution of the original canna. This was often built up of a succession of layers of various colours, obtained by dipping the first gathering into one or more pots of coloured glass, before drawing it out to form a tube.
Beads made by this process belong strictly to the class of blown glass. The other system which we will now describe takes us back to the old primitive methods of glass-working. In this case we start from a solid rod of glass, which is manipulated in the hand of the workman somewhat like a stick of sealing-wax. Seated at a table, he melts the extremity of the canna in the flame, directed away from him by means of a blow-pipe, and twists the thread of viscid glass around a small rod of iron.[[139]] By this or similar methods, not only beads but various small objects of verroterie are formed. The surface of these may be subsequently decorated by means of appliqué studs and stringings of various coloured glass, or again, the half-fused substance may be pressed into little moulds. The spun-glass also, so much admired a few years since, is made from rods of glass melted in the flame of the table blow-pipe.
This is the process of the suppialume, in which the Venetian workmen acquired such skill in later days. It cannot be traced further back than the end of the fifteenth century, and its invention is associated with a certain Andrea Vidaore. The guild of the suppialumi was only finally constituted in 1648. If this process was really only introduced at so comparatively late a date, we have here a curious instance of a reversion to an old technique, for it is impossible to overlook the points of resemblance between it and the manner in which the ancient Egyptians built up their beads.[[140]]
It must be noted that the practical difference between the beads made by the suppialumi and those formed from hollow tubes, is not one of size. Large or small beads may be formed by either process. It is, rather, that in the first case the ornament is superficial—it is something added to the surface of the bead. On the other hand, in beads made from hollow tubes, the design, though limited in variety, is carried through the whole bead. This is a distinction much appreciated by native connoisseurs in Central Africa and elsewhere.
Among the beads made from hollow tubes there is one type, generally of commanding size, which may perhaps claim some attention. I refer to the great Chevron Beads, the Perle a rosette of the Italians, à propos of the origin and date of which a not insignificant literature has accumulated. I treat of them here, as in by far the larger number of instances, if not in all cases, these beads can be undoubtedly recognised as of Venetian manufacture. These chevron beads have been made from canes built up of concentric layers of coloured glass. They have attracted exceptional attention from the fact that examples have been found in so many widely separated parts of the world, and from their possessing, in some cases, apparently well founded claims to great age. The arrangement and the succession of the colours in the glass is in every case practically identical. The canes from which they were formed have been built up of three main concentric layers, externally a deep cobalt blue, then an opaque brick red, and in the centre a tube of pale green transparent glass; these main layers are divided by thinner ones of opaque white glass, and the dividing surfaces have been worked into a series of chevrons or zig-zags (these chevrons are in all cases, I think, twelve in number) so as to present a star-like pattern on a cross section. The only variations on this general type are as follows: the chevrons are, in a few cases, dragged laterally so as to resemble the teeth of a circular saw; the central tube of transparent glass is sometimes divided by a zig-zag layer of opaque white; and, very rarely, the external layer is green instead of blue. In shape and size, however, these chevron beads show wide divergences: in length they may vary from two and a half inches to as little as a third of an inch, and the diameter, though generally less, is in a few cases greater, than the length. The extremities in some of the larger and presumably older specimens are facetted, that is to say, ground down to a pyramidal form. What, however, we may call the normal type, is of a cylindrical shape with rounded ends ([Plate XV.] 2).
These perle a rosette are at the present day made at Murano for the African market. When in the spring of 1903 I visited the glass-works of the ‘Venice and Murano Company,’ I was shown by Signor Andrea Rioda specimens both of these beads and of the canes from which they are prepared; the company was at that time executing a large order from a French firm, for the Congo. This work, however, is not generally undertaken by the firms that make the ordinary conterie, for these large beads have to be separately ground and polished on a wheel—an important point, as we shall see. They have been made at Murano, the local tradition affirms, from time without memory.
Quite recently, in the immediate neighbourhood of Treviso, a deposit of these chevron beads has been discovered in a bank beside an open field; ‘bushel loads’ of fragments were extracted, but not a single perfect bead. They were without exception broken fragments, not improbably ‘wasters,’ thrown aside possibly by those who were employed in grinding them. Treviso, I may note, is a town of mills and swift-flowing streams—in fact, the nearest point to Venice where abundant water-power could be found. Unfortunately no light so far has been thrown upon the age of this curious deposit.[[141]]
In general aspect, in the scheme of colour especially, there is something unmistakably African about these chevron beads. To say nothing of their exceptional size, they have little in common with any other type of polychrome bead, whether Egyptian, classical, or from Teutonic graves.
I may at once say that I consider these perle a rosette as essentially of Venetian origin, and made, above all, for the African market. How the industry arose, and whether the Venetians in this instance as in other cases took the place of earlier Byzantine or Syrian glass-workers, there is nothing to show. We know that the Alexandrians of Greek and Roman times, like the Phœnicians before them, traded with the native races of Central Africa. These beads have certainly been found in Egypt,[[142]] especially in Upper Egypt and Nubia; it is even said that some of the Soudanese tribes have succeeded in making passable imitations of them.
It must be remembered that the Venetians, at least in later times, did not trade directly with inland and barbarous races. Their business was to deliver their merchandise at certain seaport towns where they had factories or agencies. The goods then fell into the hands of local merchants who distributed them by caravans or sent them on coastways in their ships. So the Arab traders of Egypt, reshipping the Venetian wares at Suez or other ports of the Red Sea, would carry them in their dhows to Zanzibar or India; and so again in later days the merchants of Amsterdam and London, who held at times vast stores of Venetian beads, distributed them in Dutch or English ships to the very extremities of the world. The trade in beads was very active in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the present day, in the warehouses of Bevis Marks and Houndsditch, there is probably accumulated a larger stock of beads than in Venice itself.
So far we are on firm ground, nor is there anything surprising when we are told that the large chevron beads have been found in Central Africa,[[143]] in the South Sea Islands, and even in Canada and the United States. But when we hear of examples being taken from Red Indian grave-mounds and even from ancient Peruvian tombs, we feel some need of hesitation before accepting the statement. So of the specimens found in England, many of them are water-worn and have an air of the remotest antiquity: they have been extracted from wells, from river-beds, and, it is stated, from Anglo-Saxon graves. I may mention that these chevron beads early attracted the attention of English antiquaries. Dr. Stukeley, who had several in his possession, brings them up in his disquisition on Druidical remains, and Bishop Gibson, as far back as the beginning of the eighteenth century, figures them in his edition of Camden’s Britannia. Gibson mentions that when he was opening a grave (presumably Anglo-Saxon) at Ash, a worthy friend by way of jest placed one of these glain nidr or ‘serpent’s eggs’ among the genuine ancient beads. I will not say with regard to this attempt at mystification—ex uno disce omnes; but the story suggests an attitude of caution in the case of other similar finds.
I cannot discuss this thorny question here, and must refer those interested in such subjects as the Glain Nidr or ‘Adder Beads of the Druids,’ or again, the Breton Ouef rouge du Serpent Marin, to the exhaustive paper by the late Mr. John Brent in the forty-fifth volume of Archæologia.
CHAPTER XII
THE ENAMELLED VENETIAN GLASS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
In the fourteenth century, as we have seen, the Venetian galleys brought glass ware to the ports of England and the Netherlands. M. de Laborde (Les Ducs de Bourgogne) found in the archives of Lille an order for payment, signed by Duke Philip of Burgundy, ‘pour seze voirres et une escuelle de voirre, des voirriers que les galées de Venise ont avan apportez en nostre pays de Flandres—quatre franc.’ This is dated from Paris, 1394. Even after making every allowance for the larger purchasing power of money in those days, the seventeen vessels of glass bought by a royal prince for four francs cannot have been of exceptional quality. Again, in the year 1399, Richard II., shortly before his deposition, granted permission to certain traders to sell, on the decks of the Venetian galleys lately arrived in the port of London, their cargo of small glass vessels and earthenware plates (Calendar of State Papers—Venetian, 1899-1900). Here again there is nothing to suggest any high artistic value in the glass offered for sale.
As we have seen, with the possible exception of two goblets in the British Museum, there does not exist a single example of glass of an earlier date than the fifteenth century, which can definitely claim to be of Venetian origin.
The quattro-cento glass of Venice,[[144]] for the most part decorated with enamel and gilding, may be conveniently arranged in accordance with the nature of the enamels that cover it.
I will take first a class in which the enamel plays but a subordinate part. The clear white glass, somewhat thick and heavy compared with later examples, is often ornamented with appliqué bosses of coloured glass; such glass is sparingly decorated with opaque enamels, and this decoration takes the form of little beads or studs, at times combined with an imbricated pattern in gold. We sometimes meet with large bowls on low feet (a form of drageoir or sweetmeat dish) which are so decorated. There is, however, no finer example of this style of ornament than the standing beaker with cover in the British Museum (Slade, 362). The general outline and the obliquely curved gadroons of this magnificent cup were no doubt suggested by some piece of late Gothic silver-plate. On the flat-headed knob that surmounts the cover are the half obliterated remains of a coat of arms, but otherwise the enamelling is confined to some sparely applied studding and filleting. There is a covered goblet of the same class in the Waddesdon collection remarkable for an inscription in some South-Slavonic dialect, scratched with a diamond on the foot. The blue and purple bosses round the body of these beakers partake somewhat of the nature of prunts.
Another class of fifteenth-century enamelled glass calls to mind in the manner of its decoration the contemporary enamelled copper ware of Venice (émaux peints). Indeed, in some examples where the enamel is spread over the whole field and subsequently decorated with other colours, there is little to indicate that such a vessel has a basis of glass rather than of metal. This is the case with the beautiful goblet covered with pale turquoise blue enamel in the Waddesdon Room in the British Museum. The decoration is given by an elaborate imbrication of white, red, and gold; the well-drawn male and female figures, in lozenge-shaped medallions, closely resemble certain woodcuts in Venetian books of the fifteenth century. If, as is probable, this cup is not much later in date than the year 1450, we have in it one of the earliest examples in glass of the complete goblet or wine-glass form, with bowl, stem, and foot.[[145]] The outline of the bowl should be noticed: the double curve, tending somewhat inwards at the top, is characteristic of these quattro-cento glasses; here again the form is doubtless derived from silver-plate.
These opaque solid enamels are, however, more frequently applied here and there upon a basis of transparent coloured glass. For the ground a deep cobalt blue was most in favour, but a rich leafy green and other colours also occur at times. The opaque enamels are laid on thickly in masses; upon these again details are painted by further touches of colour.
Perhaps the most famous example of this class is the Coppa Nuziale in the Museo Civico at Venice ([Plate XXIX.]). This cup, in outline somewhat like a Greek crater, with simple massive foot and stem, is of deep blue glass; it is some eight or nine inches in height. On one side we have a procession of knights and ladies on horseback; on the other side the company are seen bathing in an open fountain. Between are medallions with male and female heads—presumably the bride and bridegroom. The costume would point rather to the first than to the second half of the fifteenth century. There is not much prominent colour apart from the green of the grass and the trees; the horses and the flesh-tints are rendered by white enamels, and gilding, of course, is freely used; here and there we see a little pale blue enamel. This coppa is traditionally assigned to Angelo Berovieri, the greatest name among the Venetian glass-workers of the fifteenth century. To him indeed the introduction, or at least the perfection, of the process of enamelling on glass is generally attributed.
MARRIAGE CUP BY BEROVIERI
VENETIAN, FIFTEENTH CENTURY
In the British Museum (Slade, 363) is another Coppa Nuziale, on which the style of the decoration closely follows that of the Berovieri cup. We have the same deep blue ground and the same treatment of the solid opaque enamels; the bowl, however, in this case is cylindrical. On one side we see a Cupid seated on a two-headed swan, conducting a triumphal car; on the other, Venus enthroned in another car is preceded by a figure—presumably Hymen—bearing a torch; in front a centaur is grasping the hand of a man in full armour.[[146]]
The bright green enamel by which on these cups the grass and the conventional trees are rendered, is perhaps the most characteristic colour of this quattro-cento ware. Note also on the wide-spreading foot the manner in which the gold is applied: in the use of this metal, if in nothing else, the Venetians surpassed their Saracenic predecessors. Here we have an early instance of gilding semé or broken up into minute irregular fragments. The gold appears to be incorporated with the glass; it must have been laid on at an early stage, for it lies scattered in detached fragments, and this is undoubtedly caused by the dragging of the glass, while still soft, during the process of manufacture. This manner of applying gold was used with great effect by the Venetians during the finest period—before and after 1500. Notice especially a little cup of thin white glass in the British Museum, on which the decoration is confined to a delicate powdering of gold of this nature.
Of the application of enamels of this class to a deep green ground, there is no finer example than the standing cup from the Debruge and Soltykoff collections (Slade, 361). This, too, is without doubt a Coppa Nuziale, and in the heads in the two medallions we may again recognise the bride and bridegroom. On a scroll by the latter head we read, AMOR VOL FEE—‘Love needs faith.’ The quaint head-dress of the woman calls to mind certain figures in Carpaccio’s pictures of contemporary Venetian life.
In the enamelled cups of this class the technical imperfections of the deep-coloured glass ground should be noticed. This is seen above all in the irregular outline of the margin. We have here a class of imperfection of quite a different nature from the tendency to collapse so often seen in large pieces of Saracenic glass. In the case of the Venetian glass the unevenness appears to arise from the imperfect fluidity of the metal when in the hands of the blower.
The date of this enamelled glass is fairly well fixed by the style in which the figure subjects are treated. The processions—the trionfi—are but rudely executed reproductions of those found on fifteenth-century marriage coffers, the heads in the medallions we meet with again on the contemporary mezza-majolica. Both may be seen in the woodcuts of the earliest printed books. We find the source of the gadroons and imbricated patterns in the repoussé forms given by the Venetians to their enamelled copper-ware.
There is somewhat more difficulty in determining the date of another class of Venetian enamelled glass. I refer to that on which the opaque enamels are painted with a brush upon a ground of thin colourless glass. In this decoration, especially in the conventional foliage, the drag of the brush loaded with the thin, somewhat intractable pigment, may often be clearly traced. There are some early examples of these ‘painted’ enamels which we may regard as the prototypes of a style of decoration on glass which soon obtained almost a monopoly among enamelled wares. We see the same technique and the same opaque colours on the French glass of the sixteenth century, and the faults are exaggerated and the palette even heavier in the case of the German glass of a still later time. We must seek the origin of this school in the Italian painters on majolica; on the other hand, in the eighteenth century the methods of the enamellers on glass no doubt influenced the decorators of porcelain both in Germany and elsewhere.
And here I may say that certain important technical difficulties, that must always have hampered the use of true transparent enamels on glass, have scarcely received the attention that they deserve. I mean the relations of the enamels, as regards the softening-point and rate of contraction on cooling, to the ground on which they rest. The question here is very similar to that which presents itself in the case of porcelain. Our present problem is, however, somewhat simpler, for with the latter material we have not only to consider the relation of the enamels to the glaze on which they lie (this takes, indeed, the place of our glass ground), but in addition the relation of the glaze itself to the porcelain body beneath must not be neglected.
The first condition for the successful application of an enamel is that it should be more fusible than the glass to which it is applied; not only that, but at the temperature at which the enamel fuses, the glass must still maintain its rigidity, otherwise the vessel on coming from the enameller’s stove will not preserve its original symmetry. It has been already suggested that the partial collapse so often observed in the large Cairene lamps may probably be explained in this way.
On the other hand, if the surface of the glass is not to some degree softened, there will be no intimate connection between it and the enamel, and the latter will be likely to scale off before long. This tendency will be increased if there is much difference in the rate or amount of contraction between the two materials. Difficulties of this kind long hindered the employment of certain fluxes and colours—that of cobalt, for instance, combined with a transparent flux. Such obstacles may, however, be surmounted in a measure, and the process simplified by employing (in place of a transparent lead flux) an opaque white, stanniferous enamel merely stained, in cases only externally, by a little colouring material. This apparently was the plan universally adopted by the Venetians in the fifteenth century, and it is here that their experience of the use of a similar enamel on copper may have served them.
One cannot but marvel at the technical dexterity so early acquired, and, alas! so soon lost by the Saracens, in the application of enamels to glass. The means by which they avoided the use of a lead flux in the case of their famous translucent blue, is above all worthy of admiration (see above, [Chapter X.]).
Certain defects which we note in the glass to which the Venetians applied their thick enamels may have been inseparably bound up with the use of these same enamels, and the impossibility of overcoming these defects may have been one of the causes of their abandonment and of the general adoption in their place of the painted decoration—mere thin skins of colour—which they were now able to apply to their white cristallo, the typical glass of Venice. After the commencement of the sixteenth century, indeed, the use of the solid enamels was almost confined to beadings and subsidiary ornament sparingly applied.
VENETIAN GLASS
1. ENAMELLED LAMP. EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY 2. ENAMELLED GLASS CUP. FOUND IN EXCAVATIONS FOR CAMPANILE. FIFTEENTH CENTURY
To return after this long digression to our class of thinly painted enamels. We find that the use of these painted colours came in at quite an early date. I will take as typical examples a pair of goblets or wine-glasses in the British Museum, one from the Slade collection (No. 391), the other presented by the late Sir A. W. Franks. These are both conical cups of simple outline, of which the bowl passes directly into the spreading foot. The edge of this foot is turned over to form a sort of ring on the upper margin. In fact, these goblets may be taken as representatives of one of the earliest types of that long series of wine-glasses that we shall come across again and again in later days. On the first of these cups we see two figures on horseback, one waving a banner and the other holding a flag; the costume points to the end of the fifteenth century. This is a detail of some importance, for as a rule the decoration of this class of enamelled glass is confined to foliage, scrolls, and classically treated figures of sirens or satyrs.
Almost identical in shape, and decorated in a similar manner, is a little goblet, or rather fragment of a goblet, lately dug up in the Piazza of St. Mark at Venice during the excavations for the foundations of the new Campanile. ([Plate XXX.] 2). This little glass, between four and five inches in height, is of a thinnish clear metal, decorated with scrolls of a somewhat Gothic character, indicated by lines of opaque white; the other enamels are green, an opaque red, a rich yellow, and a deep as well as a turquoise blue, the latter laid on thickly. This goblet may perhaps be referred to the middle of the fifteenth century.
A still finer example of these ‘painted’ enamels is to be found in a very beautiful ewer now in the Louvre. The colours are laid on with a brush as in the previous specimens, but as we often find in later examples—and this applies equally to the French and German enamelled glass—the opaque red is here replaced by a poor brown. Within a large medallion is seen a herald riding on a griffin; the ground is covered by scale patterns and scrolls of many colours.
CHAPTER XIII
VARIETIES OF VENETIAN GLASS—EARLY LITERATURE
The history of modern glass begins, as I have said, with the famous Venetian cristallo of the sixteenth century. Many other varieties were made at this time, but it was the absolutely colourless and transparent glass, capable of being blown to extreme thinness and then worked into every variety of form, that above all established the European reputation of the Murano glass-workers. Before long, in nearly every country of Western Europe, the old methods of working were falling into disuse; and by the aid of skilled workmen who were tempted away from Murano, or, failing that, were hired from the rival glass furnaces of L’Altare, the attempt was made to imitate this clear white glass of Venice.
We have, then, in this cristallo the typical glass of Venice, and here more than in any other group, whether of earlier or of later date, we find a family of glass of which the artistic merit depends directly upon the skill of the glass-blower, rather than on that of the enameller or engraver. In the simpler and earlier specimens, an undeniable charm is derived from the extreme tenuity of the material—there is an evanescent and almost ghostly air about the ‘diaphanous, pellucid, dainty body’[[147]] of not a few of these glasses. Although entirely free from any positive colour, there is often a certain tendency to greyness in the metal, and this is increased to a misty cloudiness when the surface has been attacked by atmospheric influence, as is not unfrequently the case with glasses that have been long exposed to our damp English climate.
VENETIAN GLASS
FLOWER-VASE OF COLOURLESS GLASS WITH BLUE THREADING AND STUDS
There is little change or development to be observed in the glass of this character made at Murano during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nor is it always safe to regard contorted shapes and elaborate decorations as necessarily a sign of a late origin. This caution is confirmed by an often quoted passage from Sabellico, the learned librarian of St. Mark’s and historian of Venice; it is from a Latin work, De Situ Venetæ Urbis, written about 1495. We can form from it some idea of the wonderful variety of the outturn from the Murano glass-works at that time, and of the elaborate shapes that were already given to the vessels. When we pass, says Sabellico, from Venice to the suburb of Murano, we are struck by the grandeur and size of the buildings; it appears from afar as a city, extending for a mile in length. The island owes its chief renown to its glass-works. It was a famous discovery to make glass that should vie with crystal in clearness. Since then the nimble wit of the workmen and the never-resting care to find something new have led them to apply to the material a thousand various colours and shapes without number. Hence the calices, the flasks, the canthari, the ewers, the candelabra, the animals of every race, the horns, the beads (segmenta), the bracelets, etc. etc. So far Sabellico—the good man is, I am afraid, more concerned with his latinity than with the matter in hand: but this is a weakness that he shares with more than one writer of this time. He goes on to speak of the ‘Murrhine vases’ made at Murano, of which the only fault is their cheapness; all these marvels had the Venetian galleys brought before the eyes of the nations, so that, wondrous to say, by familiarity they had become as things base and common.
In the means adopted by the Venetians to adorn their cristallo we are at times taken back to Roman methods. The handles, often of blue glass, and the stringings and frillings that surround the body are applied hastily but skilfully by the light hand of the workman. This kind of ornament reached its completest development in the tall beakers and vases with handles that took the form of wing-like excrescences. These ‘winged beakers’ were afterwards copied and the forms exaggerated in Germany and in the Netherlands, where they were held to be especially characteristic of the now fashionable glass of Venice.
It is certainly remarkable how little this Muranese glass as a whole reflects the glorious Venetian art of the cinquecento. Apart from some of the earlier enamelled and gilt examples and from the simpler forms of the pure thin cristallo, we can find among it little that is quite satisfactory from an artistic point of view. Much even of the sixteenth-century glass is merely fantastic, and appeals only to childish tastes. The bulk of it was probably made for foreign markets, for the dull northern barbarian, whose attention had to be caught by something new and extravagant.
Little heed is paid to this more elaborately decorated glass by the great contemporary painters. In fact, I can find no example of it in their works. When glass is introduced, it is invariably of the simplest description. In the big altar-pieces of Giovanni Bellini, of Cima, or of Carpaccio, the glass lamps that hang from the roof are in the form of little conical cups of plain outline. Amid all the elaborate staffage of Crivelli’s pictures, the lily on the table or ledge beside the Virgin stands in a little cylindrical beaker of glass, for all the world like a modern tumbler.[[148]] So in the next century we may search in vain in the pictures of Titian or of Veronese for elaborate examples of Venetian glass. In the banquet scenes of the latter painter, the wine indeed is served from graceful decanters with tall necks and globular bodies, and is drunk from tazza-shaped goblets of glass,[[149]] but on the credenza or buffet at the side, the gold and silver plate is never relieved by examples of our material.
VENETIAN GLASS
OPAQUE WHITE WITH GILT SCROLLS. EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY
A curious account of a banquet given at Mantua, on the occasion of the marriage of the Marquis, is quoted by Mr. Nesbitt from a contemporary writer. There was, we are told, on this occasion such a display of ‘diversi bicchieri, carrafe, e giarre ed altri bellissimi vasi di cristallo di Venezia, che credo vi fussero concorse tutte le botteghe di Morano!’ And there was need of this store, he adds, seeing that after they had drunk, the guests proceeded to break the glasses they held in their hands ‘per segno di grande allegrezza.’[[150]] We are reminded of the feast described by Joinville, though in that case the glasses were swept off the table by the well-aimed Bible of one of the guests (see p. [136]).
I shall now have to pass in rapid review the principal varieties and applications of the glass made at Murano in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Frosted or Crackle Glass is perhaps the simplest modification of the pure cristallo. To produce this, the paraison is plunged rapidly into cold water, and after reheating to the necessary degree, but not beyond, it is worked into the desired form. A similar effect is at times produced by rolling the molten paraison upon fragments of crushed glass. I have spoken in the introductory chapter of certain rare cases where a minute fissuring has been set up in the substance of the glass. This true crackle is probably in all cases the result of a subsequent structural change.
Latticinio, Lattisuol, or Lattimo are names given by the Venetians to a milk-white opaque glass. White enamels were freely used in the fifteenth century, but the earliest known specimen of Venetian glass, the whole body of which is rendered opaque by the presence of oxide of tin (calcina di stagno)—the vetro bianco di smalto of the early writers[[151]]—can hardly be older than the beginning of the next century.
The spherical vase (Slade, 402) formerly in the possession of the Marquis D’Azeglio, is an exceptionally beautiful example of this milk-white glass ([Plate XXXII.]). The gilt scrolls harmonise well with the slightly warmish ground, and were it not for the rudely executed mermaids on either side, an Eastern origin might well have been sought for this quite exceptional piece; in fact, I do not know of any other specimen of undoubted Venetian glass so distinctly Persian in character.
In the Museo Civico at Venice is a flask (circa 1530) of this lattimo glass, about five inches in height, decorated in blue, with allegorical subjects. Although somewhat rudely executed, the painting is masterly in style, and may be compared to that on the best contemporary majolica ([Plate XXXIII.]). At a first glance this little vase might be taken for an example of Medici porcelain, and indeed we must bear in mind that all through the sixteenth century attempts were being made in Venice to imitate the porcelain of the Far East, more especially the plain white and the blue and white wares which were already arriving at Venice in considerable quantity.
This lattimo glass came much into favour for a second time early in the eighteenth century; it was at that time often decorated in colours in a pseudo-Japanese style. This later milk-white glass is once more closely associated with the attempts then again made at Venice, as in so many other countries, to imitate the porcelain of China and Japan. This had indeed, before the end of the previous century, been in a measure accomplished in France by means of a soft paste, in the composition of which a glass-like frit played an important part. At a still later time this lattimo glass was even painted in monochrome, in imitation of our early printed Worcester porcelain!
PILGRIM’S BOTTLE; DESIGN IN BLUE ON LATTIMO GLASS
VENETIAN, EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Closely based upon this latticinio—for the threads in a vast majority of cases are of an opaque white—is the famous Vetro di Trina or lace-glass. At the beginning of the last century the art of making this net-work decoration appears to have almost died out, but in the thirties and forties it was revived by Domenico Bussolin, and when later on more interest began to be taken in the Murano glass, it was to this vetro a reticelli that at first most attention was given. The details of the manufacture were described and illustrated by the well-known director of the Choisy glass-works, M. Bontemps (Exposé des moyens employés pour la fabrication des verres filigranes, 1845).
There is, however, a simpler and perhaps easier application of these bands of lattimo, in which they are applied in a series of festoons to the surface. In this case the opaque white enamel appears to have been laid on to the paraison at an early stage and dragged into crescent-shaped waves, so as to resemble closely the decoration of the little flasks of coloured glass from Egyptian and early Greek tombs—to those later examples more especially, from Rhodes and Cyprus, on which the colours are only applied to the surface (p. [37]), the resemblance in technique is very close. There are many interesting specimens of this festooned latticinio in the British Museum. In the case of the little biberon (Slade, No. 628) the festoons are worked into a palm pattern, identical with that often found on the little primitive vases.
I shall not attempt to follow in detail the manner of preparation of the true vetro di trina,—suffice to say that it is built up of a number of juxtaposed rods; these rods are arranged perpendicularly, side by side, so as to form a hollow cylinder, and into the midst a small vesicle of molten glass is inserted; to this the rods adhere, and the whole mass is then worked into the desired form. The rods themselves—they are similar to the canne supplied to the suppialume workers (p. [187])—may be either of opaque or clear glass, or they may be formed of elaborate combinations of the two (canelle a ritorto o merlate); the most complicated patterns are thus obtained. When two series of these rods are arranged to cross one another at an angle, we get a reticulated pattern, and within the reticelli thus formed a bubble of air may be caught up. There is, indeed, little opportunity for finding in this kind of work any free play for the decorative feeling of the artist, and the result of all these ingenious combinations of crossings and interlacings is only too often to give a tame and machine-made air to the finished vase or tazza.
The Opalised Glass, the Calcedonio[[152]] of the Venetians, is obtained by adding the same materials as in the case of the latticinio, but in very small proportions: it stands to the latter as weak milk and water to pure milk. In practice, I believe, the opalescence is often given by the addition of phosphate of lime in the form of bone-ash, sometimes, perhaps, by arsenious acid.[[153]] Pale blue by reflected light, it takes various orange and yellow tints when the light is transmitted through it. Such a vessel as the cylindrical goblet and cover of thick calcedonio in the Waddesdon Room at the British Museum, with a design in high relief representing the Triumph of Neptune, must have been cast in a mould.
We now come to certain varieties of glass which were much admired at one time, but are now little in favour. The aim, it would seem, in this class, as in the case of the old Roman prototype, was to imitate various kinds of precious stones and marbles. But the Venetians showed here little of the restraint of their classical predecessors, so that on the whole the colours, where not crude, are huddled together in muddy compounds.
An opaque red glass resembling jasper was probably known at Murano as early as the fourteenth century. In an inventory of the property of the Duke of Anjou (circa 1360) there is mention of a ‘pichier de voirre vermeil semblable a Jaspe.’ So in the next century, Charles the Bold possessed ‘Ung hanap de Jaspe garni d’or, à œuvre de Venise’—to judge from the expression used this beaker was also of glass.[[154]]
Already in a Milanese manuscript of 1443 (described below) there is a formula given for making schmelz by means of a mixture of certain salts of silver, iron, and copper, and before the end of the century we have Sabellico’s complaint that the modern murrhine glass was becoming far too common (see page 201); so that, on the whole, this family of marbled glass is, perhaps, as old as any other Venetian glass of which we have specimens. The examples, however, that have survived appear to be mostly of a somewhat later date. We find imitations of both classes of the Roman millefiori—the tints, however, are generally crudely matched—and especially several varieties of marbled glass with contorted veins of many colours. The schmelz par excellence of the Venetians (the German name would seem to point to a northern origin) is an irregularly veined and mottled mass, a somewhat unpleasant combination of bluish-green and purple tints, calling to mind certain kinds of slag—indeed it may have originally been made in imitation of some such substance. There are a few exceptionally fine early examples of this schmelz at South Kensington. Notice above all the spherical vase from the Castellani collection with cinquecento mountings and serpent handles of copper gilt; the greenish-yellow and pale blue tints are in this case harmoniously blended. To judge from the form of the bowl and stem, the cup of finely marbled schmelz at Hertford House cannot be dated much later than 1500. In this case, and probably in others also, the marblings are only on the surface; the interior is of a uniform greyish-green colour.
Of scarcely less importance is the splashed ware for which we can again find a Roman if not an Egyptian prototype. The splashes of enamel of various colours must have been scattered over the paraison at an early stage, for they have had to follow the changes of form given to the surface in the shaping of the vessel: we see them stretched out at the neck on the little burette in the Slade collection (No. 783). This splashed glass was much admired by the French and successfully imitated by them.
Something should be said of the painted Venetian glass of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I say ‘painted,’ for such it is in general effect, although the pigments have probably in most cases been subjected to some kind of firing. The very poverty and dulness of the colours are indeed a proof of this; the artist’s palette has been subjected to the exigencies of the enameller’s muffle. We find landscapes with classical figures and amorini painted on the lower surface of bowls and rondelles (tondi). In the Dutuit collection, now housed in the Petit Palais at Paris, is a circular dish some fifteen inches in diameter, painted on the under surface, so as to be viewed through the glass; the subject, a dance of cupids, is treated in an exceptionally fine style and can scarcely be later than the middle of the sixteenth century. In many cases these designs have been added to Venetian glass by non-Venetian, sometimes by northern hands. This kind of painting or enamelling is, however, very subject to injury by use, and doubtless for this reason it is sometimes protected by a second sheet of glass. We have in such painted dishes a variety of the so-called verre églomisé to which reference has already more than once been made.
The Venetians at times drew designs on their glass with a diamond. There are some examples of this in a good cinquecento style in the Slade collection; but this work was confined to the pure scratched line, and even shading was not much used. It was not till the eighteenth century that they began to copy the later German methods of deep engraving and cutting with the wheel.
The British Museum has lately acquired a square plaque of clear thick glass; at the back, in deep intaglio, is the portrait of a Doge, who, on the ground of the letters A. G. on either side of the head, may be identified with Andrea Gritti (1523-1538).[[155]] The late M. Piot has extracted from a fifteenth-century treatise on architecture by Antonio Averlini a dialogue between two artists upon some curious applications of glass. We hear of cristallino plaques with figures carved on the lower surface, so as apparently to stand out in relief—a description which would apply well enough to this piastra.
There is no more troubled story in the history of glass-making than that of the manufacture of Mirrors at Murano from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. We have seen in the early days, when these mirrors were backed with lead (p. [138]), that the Germans had already become experts in this department. More than once in the Venetian archives there are references to the secret methods of these Todeschi. In a petition of 1503 there is mention of a plan for making good and perfect mirrors, a precious secret unknown except to certain Germans. It is impossible to resist the suspicion that there is here a reference to the cylinder process, which, as we have seen, was already known to Theophilus (p. [129]); by this process it would have been possible to produce a fairly large and comparatively flat sheet of glass. The Venetians, on the other hand, probably continued to a late period to use the old method of ‘spinning’ or ‘flashing.’[[156]]
It was only after the middle of the sixteenth century that the mirror-makers, the specchiai, formed themselves into a separate corporation; but in this guild were included, it would seem, the makers of the so-called mirrors of steel.[[157]] Thus we find that in 1574, one Francesco Zamberlan, who only two years before had taken out a patent for his ‘specchi d’acciaio,’ was admitted to the new guild on the ground of his special knowledge. Those engaged in the polishing—the lustratura and spianatura—of both materials, glass and metal, were also members of the guild.
For us the interest in these mirrors lies rather in the framing. We find the new corporation early engaged in quarrels with the painters and with the workers in tarsia, mother-of-pearl, and coral (i miniatori, i marangoni, e muschieri), who found employment in decorating the frames.
For a time, no doubt, the Venetian mirrors held their own, but before the end of the seventeenth century the French, thanks to the energy of Colbert, had not only learned all their secrets, but by an entirely new method—namely by a process of casting or founding, and subsequent rolling and polishing of the glass plates—were able to meet the demand for the large mirrors that were now regarded as indispensable in a Louis-Quatorze salon. But these ‘glaces de St. Gobain’ are of an entirely different nature from the exquisitely framed little lustri with which we are now concerned. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there are no characteristic specimens of these cinquecento mirrors—at least of those in which glass forms an important element in the frame as well—in any of our public collections. For fine examples of such work we must go to the Louvre or the Hôtel de Cluny. It will be noticed that the margin of the glass is invariably bevelled, thus forming a transition to the elaborate framing. These cinquecento Italian mirrors were extensively copied, and this at an early date, both in France and at Nuremberg.
In spite of the heroic efforts made by the authorities in the late seventeenth and in the following century to introduce the new methods of working glass at Murano, the Venetians failed to maintain their position. It was only in the more conservative Eastern markets that the demand for their mirrors was kept up; even to-day, in Syria or in Persia, these Italian glasses may not unfrequently be seen in private houses and even in mosques.
Another characteristic application of the glass of Murano was to the elaborate chandeliers that formed so important a part in the decoration of the reception-rooms of a Venetian palace in the seventeenth century. In these the metal framework is completely hidden by a thick foliage, as it were, of glass—frequently of the opalescent calcedonio—amid which the tall wax candles spring up here and there. M. Gerspach extols the decorative value of these chandeliers:—‘Le soir, le lustre de Venise allumé est un rayonnement harmonieux sans reflets discordants; le jour, stalactite ciselée, il égaye l’appartement comme une note claire et joyeuse’ (La Verrerie, p. 173).
In the eighteenth century the contorted forms, imitating leaves and flowers, were replaced by pendent discs of colourless crystal, cut, polished, and often facetted. Of these later chandeliers there is a splendid series, whether of Venetian origin or not I do not know, at Hertford House. Such chandeliers were known in England in the eighteenth century as ‘lustres.’[[158]] They are above all numerous in German palaces, and most of the glass is probably of German or Flemish origin. But of the earlier type I cannot find a single example in any of our public museums.[[159]] The manufacture, however, has been revived at Murano, and chandeliers of this class, with no claims to antiquity, may often be seen in private houses both at home and abroad. The spread of electric lighting has given a stimulus to work of this kind, for the corolla-shaped shades that so often accompany our incandescent lamps have, in most cases, obviously been modelled upon the glass of the old Venetian chandeliers.
The glass-workers of Murano were a conservative body; their work was based upon secret processes and rule-of-thumb formulas. The elaborate division into different arti or corporations, each governed by its separate mariegola, made it excessively difficult to introduce any radical changes into the methods of work. It is quite pathetic to observe the efforts of the comparatively enlightened governing body, the conservatori alle arti, who in the last years of the republic attempted to introduce the new processes that were revolutionising the glass industry in the north of Europe. We find reports signed by great names—Morosini and others—recommending the introduction of English machinery, and drawing up plans for the cultivation of the Salsola soda on the islands of the lagoons. Little attention apparently was given to the artistic side by these reformers. One of the last names in the long list of the Murano glass-makers is that of Giuseppe Briati, famous for the purity of his cristallo; he excelled, too, in the designing and the execution of the vetro di trina, and Lazari declares that much of the ‘lace glass’ in our collections attributed to the cinquecento belongs rather to him or to his school.[[160]] Briati in 1739 was allowed to set up a furnace in Venice itself for the preparation of his cristallo, the first time for more than four hundred years that such a permission had been granted. It is of this Briati that we are told that his glass found a place on the credenza or buffet at the public banquets of the Doge, beside the gold and silver plate. This would appear to have been an innovation (see above, p. [203]) introduced with the special aim of encouraging the declining industry. An exception was again made in favour of one Giorgio Barbaria, who so late as 1790, in the parish of the Gesuiti, manufactured bottles by a new English method. But as a French writer somewhat naïvely puts it—‘ce genre ne prête guère à la fantaisie.’
Before this time the Venetians had yielded to the new fashion of the day, and were making cut and engraved glass more or less after German or Bohemian models. Of this class were the trionfi di tavola—trophies of glass for the decoration of the dinner-table—as well as the gigantic chandeliers known as ‘ciocche.’ To such productions the artistic work of the time appears to have been confined. Of the first there is a fine specimen from the Casa Morosini set out in the centre of one of the rooms in the Museo Civico at Venice. I have already mentioned the chandeliers of cut glass. They played an important part in a rococo interior.
After the occupation of Venice by the French in 1797, the Directory attempted unsuccessfully to transplant the manufacture of beads (marguerites) to Paris. It is significant that they regarded this as the most important part of the glass industry. The corporations or arti were finally abolished in 1806.
During the ensuing thirty years the manufacture of glass was at the lowest ebb. There was, however, a first revival about 1838, which is associated with the name of Bussolin. But it was the energy and skill of a lawyer from Vicenza, Antonio Salviati, with the financial assistance of certain English enthusiasts for the art, Sir Henry Layard and Sir William Drake, in the first place, that led, not long after the middle of the century, to the furnaces of Murano again turning out something beyond window-glass and beads.
From the technical side Venetian glass belongs essentially to the Mediterranean family—the art was possibly learned in the first instance from the Byzantine Greeks. But it is probably as a consequence of their intercourse with the coast of Syria, the old home of glass, that the Venetians acquired at so early a date a pre-eminent position as glass-workers. Like that of their predecessors, theirs was essentially a soda glass. What distinguished it was, above all, its total freedom from colour; the Venetians were the first, at least since Roman times, to make an absolutely clear white glass. This result they obtained not only by care in the selection of their materials, especially in the source of the silica, but also by an early mastery of the use of manganese, ‘the glass-maker’s soap.’ The Venetian glass excelled again in its working qualities, in the extreme ductility which it maintained through a wide range of temperature. This property was in a measure due to the large quantity of alkali which entered into its composition. On the other hand, this excess of soda has led at times to a rapid tarnishing of the surface, visible above all in our damp climate.
VENETIAN GLASS
ABOUT 1500
1. PLATE, ENAMELLED AND GILT—ARMS OF DELLA ROVERE FAMILY 2. TAZZA, ENAMELLED WITH COAT OF ARMS
But it is to the works of the contemporary Italian writers that we had better turn for information on these practical points. These are of two classes:—1st, Works of some literary pretension which contain chapters on the glass of Murano for the information of the general public. 2nd, Technical treatises, consisting for the most part of formulas for the use of the glass-maker. To the first class belong Fioravanti’s remarks on mirrors, which we have already quoted. Biringuccio, the Sienese, in his treatise on les arts du feu (De la Pirotechnia, Venice, 1540), has a chapter on glass (Bk. II. cap. xiii.). He tells us that the Venetians made glass from the ashes of chali, an herb that grows in Syria and also near Magalone, in the south of France (the lagoons of Maguelonne, near Cette). In the place of this chali the ashes of fern or of the mysterious duznea may be used. One part of the lixiviated ash is mixed with two of the cogoli, the clear white pebbles found in the bed of certain streams. To these materials a small amount of manganese is added, and the whole melted in a reverberatory furnace to form a substance known as fritta, already a kind of glass, but ‘mal purgata.’ The glass furnace is then described in some detail: it is made to hold eight crucibles (conconi), each three-quarters of a braccio (say fifteen inches) in height. These conconi are made with terra di Valencia, and are first well dried and annealed over the fritting-hearth. We are told how, after melting in these pots, the viscous substance is collected at the end of a hollow rod of iron, turned and returned upon the marver to unite the mass together, and then by blowing down the tube extended to form a vesicle. This ‘vescicha’ is now whirled round the head of the workman to lengthen it, or it may be pressed into a mould of bronze (‘in un cavo di bronzo’). It is now transferred to another rod of iron (the pontella, though the word is not used), worked up in various ways, and cut with shears. The handles and feet are added, and the vessel may be decorated by enamelling or otherwise.[[161]]
La Piazza Universale di tutte le professioni del Mondo, by Tommaso Garzoni of Bagnacavallo, was, to judge from the numerous editions issued, a very popular work in its day. The copy before me, not by any means the first edition, is dated Venice, 1585. It contains a chapter entitled ‘De Vetrari, o Biccherari, Occhialari e Fenestrari.’ The superiority of the glass of Murano, ‘luogo amenissimo e delitiosissimo presso a Venetia,’ he attributes to the saltness of the water, to the absence of dust, so detrimental to the work, and to the abundant supply of wood which gives a most beautiful and clear flame. Besides, it is only at Murano that they know how to prepare the soda with which the beautiful cristallo is made. That made from the herb ugnea (cf. the duznea of Biringuccio) or from fern, produces a yellow and brittle glass,—the inferiority of the potash glass is here indirectly indicated. Among the long list of the vessels made at Murano we find zuccarini a reticelli or a ritortoli, interesting as an early mention of lace glass. The word zuccarino, literally a basin for sweets, is used as a general name for covered bowls or dishes. We then have the account (already quoted) of the preparation of latticinio, and also of a glass made up of fragments of canne of various colours, a kind of millefiori, in fact. There is, he tells us, nothing imaginable in the world that these Muranese cannot make with glass—castles even with towers, bastions, walls, and cannon. ‘Come nell’ Ascensa di Venetia talvolta s’ è vista,’ he continues. This refers, I think, to the display of masterpieces of glass in the procession on Ascension Day.
Garzoni, we must remember, is in this book in the first place concerned with the various trades and professions of his time, and he takes us next to the occhiolari, the makers of spectacles, who ply their trade in the Merceria, and finally to the Finestrari or Vetriari, who with marvellous rapidity fit into frames of lead ‘certi occhi di vetro’ made at Murano. We see from this that the old bull’s-eye glass was still in general use.
I must now, in conclusion, say something of the other class of writers, those who, without any literary pretensions, claim to disclose the secret processes and formulas of the glass-workers. These men are the successors of Theophilus and of the compilers of the early alchemistic treatises of which I have spoken in a previous chapter. It is noticeable that not one of these men, as far as we know, was a Venetian; indeed in every case, if the writer is not a Florentine himself, it is from Florentine libraries and archives that his works have been extracted.
Cennini was essentially a writer of this class, but in his Trattato della Pittura there are only a few casual references to glass. The three little treatises found by Gaetano Milanesi in the Florentine archives, and published by him in 1864, are chiefly concerned with the preparation of glass for mosaics. They may probably be attributed to the first half of the fifteenth century, and we thus have in the recipes which fill these books the earliest documentary evidence for the composition of Venetian glass. I will quote from the first of these little works a section (xxiii.) which treats of ‘the placing of glass on the surface of glass.’ The writer, it should be noted, is concerned with the preparation of the piastre or slabs from which were cut the little cubes for mosaic work; this question of the various ways in which a leaf of gold may be included between two sheets of glass is one which has already interested us.
‘♃ The glass to be about as thin as an eye-glass. Cut the leaves of the gold to the length of the glass, and put the gold upon the glass with white of egg; then place above this gold the other upper glass, and dry the whole. Then put them in the small ovens (fornelli), and let them be on a level so as not to slope, in order that the glass may not run. When they have become red-hot, load them with an iron so that they may grow together and unite. Then place them over the arch of the fornacetta (probably the fritting-oven), and let them cool little by little.’
The next section treats of the preparation of lattimo bianco by calcining four parts of tin and two parts of lead, and then mixing the resulting powder with ten parts of Syrian soda. But as is the case with all the treatises of this class, the majority of the sections are concerned with the preparation of the various ingredients by means of which glass may be coloured—the colori da ismalti. The green and opaque red are both obtained from copper-scale, the purple and crimson from various mixtures of manganese[[162]] (so spelt in the text), and the yellow either from iron-scale or from a mixture of resin and tartar. As for the fine blue—the zaffiro—it should be noted that the pigment employed is described as azurro da vetro,[[163]] probably a preparation of cobalt—similar to what in later times was known as smalt—which the glass-workers obtained ready-made from Germany.
In the early sections of the third of these little treatises[[164]] the preparation of the soda is described in some detail. Much importance appears to be attached to the frit, for the third section is headed ‘Questa si è la pratica di fare la fritta, ciò è li pane del cristallino. Nota ed impara.’ In the composition of this frit there enters not only soda and the white pebbles from the Tecino, but a considerable amount of gromma or tartar, a substance containing potash, and perhaps lime also.
The preparation of ‘calcedonio in tutta perfezione’ is next described, and I may note that the presence in it of salts of iron and copper, to say nothing of silver, mercury, and azurro, would point to some variegated mixture resembling the schmelz of later days rather than to the opalescent glass to which this name was subsequently given (cf. p. [206]).
Of greater importance than any of these little treatises is the work that Antonio Neri published in 1612. In fact, having regard to the influence of this book on future writers on the subject, especially upon those who sought to make glass by Venetian methods in England and elsewhere, it may without doubt be given the premier place as the most important work that has ever appeared on the preparation of glass. We know very little of the author except that he was born in Florence towards the end of the sixteenth century, that he was a priest, and that he spent some time at Antwerp, where it would seem that his attention was first directed towards the manufacture of glass. When, after the death of the Grand Duke Ferdinand in 1609, the manufacture of the soft-paste Medici porcelain was abandoned, we are told that in its place glass-works were established at Pisa, and with these works we may perhaps connect Neri’s little treatise. I have, however, already gone over most of the ground covered by this book in my quotations from Biringuccio and others, and I will postpone the consideration of what little further is to be gleaned from it until I come, in the account of our English glass, to speak of the translation of Neri’s book made by Merret in 1662.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FRENCH GLASS OF THE RENAISSANCE
In the history of European glass the culminating point is perhaps reached in the Venetian glass of the first half of the sixteenth century—I am speaking, of course, from the artistic point of view. For a century or more after this time our history is concerned with little else than the spread of the Italian methods of manufacture and decoration over the west of Europe. After the middle of the seventeenth century the interest becomes more and more centred in the technical and economical improvements in the manufacture. The invention of plate-glass by the French, in England the use of coal instead of wood in the glass-furnace, and the adoption of a heavy fusible type of glass containing lead (an indirect consequence, perhaps, of this change of fuel)—these are the really notable points in the history of the first century of industrial advance. After the middle of the eighteenth century England takes a more and more important position, and the prominent question was the production of a glass of high technical excellence at a greatly reduced price. Preoccupied as we were at that time with the absorbing interest of this industrial revolution, less attention was given in this country to the artistic side in the manufacture of glass.
In the sixteenth century the interest of our subject centres in the story of the emigration of skilled glass-workers from Venice and from L’Altare, and in the more or less complete replacement of the old methods, as these Italians found their way into nearly every corner of Western Europe. It was technically the victory of the carefully prepared cristallo over the old mediæval verre de fougère or wald-glas. From another point of view the revolution was but one phase in the spread of the Italian renaissance. In fact, in one respect it was distinctly a renaissance, for the glass of Venice in composition differed little from that made during the Roman domination: it belonged essentially to the great Mediterranean family of soda-lime glass, prepared, if not from sea-weed, at least from maritime herbs. On the other hand, the indigenous glass which the cristallo replaced was almost without exception of forest origin, a potash glass made from the roughly lixiviated ashes of beechwood or bracken.
I have said that these Italian glass-workers carried their new methods all through Western Europe, but, as we shall see, their permanent influence was not the same in each case. In Germany it was in a measure but a passing fashion—neither the Italian designs nor the Italian methods of manufacture ever became prevalent. The wald-glas, in an improved form certainly, held its own, and indeed before the end of the next century was threatening the supremacy of its Venetian rival.
In France, on the other hand, the victory was in a manner complete; the old verre de fougère, it is true, long survived, but in an acknowledged position of inferiority. In the Netherlands the case was more complicated; for while on the one hand at Antwerp and at Liége the typical Venetian cristallo was more successfully imitated than elsewhere out of Italy, on the other hand, in many places in the Low Countries, the old green glass continued to be made, and the old shapes, above all the essentially Teutonic roemer, never fell out of favour. It so happens indeed that for the best renderings of examples of both these schools of glass we must go to the works of the Dutch and Flemish painters, rather than to the contemporary pictures of either Germany or Italy. This is an interesting point about which I shall have something more to say later on.
As regards Spain, the Italian influence became on the whole predominant, but here the question is complicated by the existence, in Catalonia at least, of a school of enamelled glass of which the Venetian origin is by no means certain, and this school was already well developed before the end of the fifteenth century. Finally, in the case of our own country, the Venetian emigrants who came for the most part by way of the Low Countries, had soon to divide the hitherto almost free field with glass-workers from Normandy and Lorraine.
It is only of late years that the full significance of this emigration of glass-workers from Murano and from L’Altare has been recognised. A distinguished Belgian antiquary, M. Schuermans, President of the Cour d’Appel at Liége, about the year 1880—following in this in the steps of his countryman the late M. Alexandre Pinchart, and in a measure also in those of M. Houdoy (Verrerie à la façon de Venise, Paris, 1873)—began a systematic investigation of the subject, and during a period of ten years, from 1883 to 1892, contributed to the pages of a learned periodical published at Brussels (Bulletin des Commissions Royales de l’Art et de l’Industrie) a series of letters—for so M. Schuermans modestly called them, though they were in fact so many treatises, extending some of them to more than a hundred pages—packed full with the results of his researches. One of the most curious sources of information M. Schuermans found in the reports sent from the Venetian embassies and agencies in France and elsewhere to the Council of Ten at Venice. It was not the least important duty of the diplomatic agents of the Republic to trace out the fugitive Muranese glass-workers, to endeavour to induce them, by threats or promises, to return to their homes, and if unsuccessful in this, to denounce them to the authorities in Venice, who might then proceed to throw into prison the unhappy families of these recalcitrant workmen. In extreme cases there are hints of more drastic measures in dealing with the traitors themselves—for so they were regarded—but I do not think that any instance of assassination has been definitely made out for the time of which we are now speaking. It is certainly strange that the only known cases of such judicial murders occurred at Vienna as late as the eighteenth century. The story was told long ago by Daru in his Histoire de Venise (Pièces Justificatives), and I do not know that it has ever been refuted.
Not that these extreme measures were at all times carried out with equal energy. At times, for political or other reasons, little restraint appears to have been put upon the wandering forth of the Muranese glass-workers; while at others the Council of Ten seems to have regarded the question as one of the utmost moment, aroused perhaps by reports that seemed to prove that the glass monopoly of the state was endangered. This was the case at the end of the fifteenth century, again towards the middle of the seventeenth, and more especially at the end of that century, when the Venetians began to find their industry seriously threatened by their German rivals.
In the sixteenth century, as a contemporary writer puts it, ‘Tous les rois et princes désiraient et affectaient avoir en leurs royaumes cette science’: that is to say, the knowledge of the methods of preparing the true cristallo. To obtain this knowledge from Murano was difficult and even dangerous. What wonder, then, that recourse was had to the Consuls of the glass-workers’ guild at L’Altare? These officials seem to have been always ready to negotiate for the supply to foreign princes, or even to private individuals—if the requisite payment was forthcoming—of one or more of their skilled gentleman glass-workers.[[165]] But in this case, too, a keen eye was kept upon these men: they were bound by the strictest oaths to practise their craft, when in foreign lands, with the greatest secrecy; above all they were forbidden to take any apprentices from the people among whom they were working. In France, where so many of these Altarists settled, these restrictions were the cause of constant friction, but so successfully were they as a rule enforced, that we find that, in the case of more than one centre of the new industry, it was necessary during a period of at least a century to have recourse from time to time to the original source at L’Altare, to replace the Italian workmen who had died or wandered off to other towns. For like their rivals from Murano, these Altarists were always on the move. We are reminded in this of the wandering porcelain ‘arcanists’ of the eighteenth century, who carried from one German court to another the secrets of their craft. To give but a single example; M. Schuermans has traced one of these gentilshommes de verre in migrations that led him successively to London, Liége, Maestricht, Rouen, and Paris.
In what respect, if in any, did the glass manufactured by these ‘licensed’ craftsmen from L’Altare, differ from that made by their rivals the ‘outlaws’ from Murano? This is a question that we are not in a position to answer. That there was some difference in style of working, and not merely in the technical excellence of the glass, would seem to be proved by the expression ‘à la façon d’Altare,’ or ‘ad uso d’Altare,’ so often applied to it. There is no doubt that the glass made ‘à la façon de Venise’ was, on the whole, regarded as of greater excellence, and that in the impossibility of obtaining workmen from Murano, the resort to the Consuls at L’Altare was in a measure a pis aller. We must not, however, as has sometimes been done, look upon the craftsmen from the latter town as incapable of producing anything of artistic merit. On the contrary, they not only turned out a true cristallo, but much of the enamelled glass that was so successfully made in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries came in all probability from furnaces worked by Altarists.
In fact, our ignorance on this point affords an excellent example of a difficulty that is met with again and again in this history of ours,—the difficulty, I mean, of controlling our literary material by means of the scanty examples of glass that have come down to us. It would require a large shelf in a library to hold all the bulky volumes dealing with the history of French glass that have of late years been published, works that are due above all to the local patriotism and the industry of provincial investigators. For books of this kind, the fashion was set as long ago as 1864 by M. Benjamin Fillon in his L’Art du Verre chez les Poitevins. Since then have appeared not mere brochures, but in many cases portly volumes tracing the history of the manufacture in Normandy, Picardy, Lorraine, Nevers, Lyons, and Provence. M. Schuermans has devoted to France a long letter, chiefly concerned with the settlements of Altarist workmen (op. cit., vol. xxxi.). And yet not only are specimens of glass, undoubtedly French, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries comparatively rare, but in very few cases can anything more than a guess be made as to the provinces to which these specimens are to be attributed. Such attributions indeed, when attempted, have for the most part had to be based either upon the armorial bearings forming part of the enamelled decoration, or again upon the localities where the glasses have been found—and these are criteria that fail in most cases.
Among the many anomalies that we encounter in the course of this inquiry—and surely in no kindred branch of art history are so many met with—there is nothing more surprising than the numerous important ‘developments’ of glass of one kind or another, for which we may search in vain a rational explanation—unless, indeed, it is the corresponding fact of the unexplained barrenness of certain periods and countries where such poverty would have been the least expected. One source of this apparent caprice in the presence or absence of glass of artistic merit at times and at places where the contrary might have been looked for, may be found, perhaps, in the fact that although, since Roman days at all events, the making of glass has always been an important industry, it is an industry that has only incidentally come into connection with the æsthetic movements of the time.[[166]] Some such explanation may perhaps be given for the comparatively subordinate place taken by France in the history of artistic glass, at least until quite recent days. In one department of the vitreous arts the French occupied no doubt for a time the premier place—the stained glass of their cathedrals is acknowledged to be the finest in Europe. But in our branch of the manufacture, a branch for which, curiously enough, the French alone have provided a name—la verrerie—that nation has never occupied a prominent position. Since Roman times, the first place as producers of glass vessels of artistic importance has been held in succession by Byzantine Greeks, by Saracens, by Venetians, by Germans, and for a moment by the English. It is only quite of late, since the commencement of the last quarter of the nineteenth century in fact, that any claim for such a position could be made for the French. And yet, in spite of this, the literature of that special subdivision of the arts du feu with which we are here concerned is especially a French one, and this is true not only for the technical and industrial side of the subject, but for the artistic and historical in an even greater degree.
I have spoken of the determined way in which these wandering Italians kept themselves apart from the native workmen, so that the secrets of their craft were preserved through more than one generation. In time, however, in France at any rate, not a few of these Italian craftsmen became sedentary, and not the least curious result of the recent researches by French and Belgian archivistes has been to show how certain well-known families of glass-makers from L’Altare settled down in various parts of France, where their representatives may now be found, many of them still engaged in the same work. So that, thanks to these investigations, the Saroldi of L’Altare have been provided with distant cousins in the Sarode family of Poitou; in similar manner the Ferri are represented by the Ferry of Provence, great glass-masters at the present day; the Massari by the Massary of Lorraine; and the Bormioli by the Bormiolles of Normandy and the Nivernais. All these four families were admitted long since to the noblesse of France[[167]] (Schuermans, Letter XI., 1892).
It is difficult to form any definite idea of the nature of the craft secrets of these Italians. It can hardly have related to the more obvious materials employed, for as early as 1555 (and it was only about the year 1548 that the great emigration of the Altarists began) the Oriental soda, the rocchetta of Neri, which was brought by Venetian galleys from Alexandria, had in France been already displaced by the Spanish soda or barilla, a material that has held its place until recent times. This barilla was made from the famous soda plant, the Salsola sativa, which, we are told, was grown from seed in various parts of the province of Murcia, and exported from the adjacent port of Alicante. So again the quartz pebbles from the bed of the Ticino, so highly prized by the early Venetian glass-makers, were early replaced by the pure white sand of Étaples.[[168]]
There is, however, in this connection, one point worth notice. It is impossible to prepare a workable glass from quartz and alkali alone; the presence of a certain quantity of lime is essential. Now in the forest glass—the verre de fougère—sufficient lime (or equivalent bases) is provided by the impurities in the crude potash employed; but this is no longer the case when the more carefully prepared Oriental or Spanish soda takes its place: it is now necessary to supply additional lime. It is not impossible that the secret of the shrewd Italians may have lain in this direction.
When speaking of the mediæval glass of France, I have brought forward some evidence to show that, by the fourteenth century at least, vessels of glass must have been produced in large quantities for domestic use. This of course was, without exception, verre de fougère, essentially the glass of the people, which for long was little influenced by the new Italian methods. It was this glass chiefly that was hawked round the country by itinerant vendors. Their cry was well known in Paris—‘Gentils verres, verres jolis—à deux liards les verres de pierre!’ Others, as in old days at Rome (see the quotation from Martial on [p. 82], note), collected broken glass to the cry of ‘Chambrières, regardez-y!—Voirre cassez, Voirre cassez!’[[169]] Bernard Palissy, writing towards the end of the sixteenth century, gives but a mean idea not only of the hawkers, but of the makers of glass in his day:—‘Je te prie, considère un peu les verres qui, pour avoir esté trop communs entre les hommes, sont devenuz à un prix si vil que la plupart de ceux qui les font vivent plus méchaniquement que ne font les crocheteurs de Paris ... et ces verres sont venduz et criez, par les villages, par ceux mêmes qui crient les vieux chapeaux et les vieilles ferrailles’ (quoted by Gerspach, p. 193).
It was only when the secrets of the pure cristallo and the application of enamels were introduced from Italy that glass began to take a more honourable position in France. We cannot safely trace back the foreign influence to an earlier date than the middle of the fifteenth century, and it was not brought into full play till just a century later.
The name of René, ‘king of Sicily and Jerusalem,’ and ruler under various titles in Provence, Anjou, and Lorraine, was at one time a name to conjure with in matters connected with art and literature, above all in the south of France. Of late years there has been a tendency to strip this much harassed king of many of his claims to distinction as a patron of the arts. There seems, however, every reason to connect his name with the introduction of the finer sorts of glass into France, not, of course, of the industry as a whole, though even this was at one time claimed for René. There is evidence to show that as early as 1443 a member of the Ferro family[[170]] of L’Altare was working for him at Goult, in Provence. This would be the earliest instance known to us of Italian glass-workers in France.
King René, we are told, presented to his nephew Louis XI. some pieces of glass ‘molt variolés et bien peincts.’ But we can hardly refer to so early a date the beaker of enameled glass formerly preserved at Aix, painted inside with the kneeling figure of the Magdalen by the side of her Master, so arranged that the former was only visible when the cup had been drained; so that, as the inscription quaintly expressed it:—
‘Qui bien boira
Dieu verra
Qui boira tout d’une haleine
Verra Dieu et la Madelaine.’
It was but a few years later, in 1448, that the famous charter of which a nearly contemporary copy has fortunately been preserved, was granted to certain glass-workers in Lorraine by Jean de Calabre, governor of that duchy in place of his father, King René. In this document we have early evidence of the claim of the glass-workers to the rights of gentlemen.[[171]] Full recognition is given to the ‘plusieurs beaux droitz, libertez, franchises et prérogatives, et dont eulx et leurs prédécesseurs ayant joui et usé de tous temps passez et esté tenus et réputez en telle franchise comme chevaliers estimez et gens nobles dudit duchié de Lorrainne.’ Then follows a list of all these privileges, not the least important being the exemption from ‘toutes tailles, aydes, subsides, d’ost, de giste et de chevaulchiées quelconques.’
This is by no means the earliest French document in which the claim to some kind of nobility is made for the profession. As far back as the later thirteenth century, in the reign of Philippe le Bel, the glass-workers of Champagne claimed similar rights, basing their pretensions on certain edicts of Constantine and on others found in the Theodosian Code! Charles VI., whose interest in the manufacture of glass has been already referred to (p. [137]), in his Lettres Royales of 1399, granted important rights to the glass-makers, ‘à cause de la noblesse du dict mestier.’ These privileges, however, were confined to those whose ancestors had followed the craft for several generations.
But for all this, these poor ‘gentilshommes de verre’ never obtained that complete recognition in France that had always been granted to their brother craftsmen at Venice and L’Altare, and their claims at times exposed them to ridicule. There is an often-quoted epigram, directed against one of their number (it is probably by François Maynard, a follower of Ronsard), which well expresses the popular feeling with regard to their position—
‘Votre noblesse est mince;
Car ce n’est pas d’un prince,
Daphnis, que vous sortez.
Gentilhomme de verre,
Si vous tombez à terre,
Adieu vos qualités.’
The question of these gentilshommes verriers was fully discussed by the late M. Garnier in his book upon glass (La Verrerie, p. 174 seq.), and he quotes passages from contemporary documents to show both the extent of the claims and the ambiguous position actually held by these needy gentry in the eighteenth century. At that time they were still always referred to as gentilshommes, and they vindicated their social status by fighting duels among themselves. Their position, however, was often very wretched, less so, indeed, in Normandy than in Lorraine, where the competition of the Germans was so keen. It is a significant fact that at the Revolution they as a body joined the party of the émigrés, and actually petitioned M. D’Artois to enrol them in a special corps. One point is clear: the profession of glass-worker was at all times in France open to the nobility, and this, of course, was not the case with other crafts and trades.
This long digression upon the position of the glass-workers in France was started by certain expressions in the charter granted to the glass-makers of Lorraine by the son of King René. Not a little interest attaches to the production of this eastern district; its history, as concerns glass, differs from that of the more essentially French provinces.[[172]] Here the Italians, whether from Murano or L’Altare, appear to have had little influence. In Lorraine, as in the lower Rhine country and in the bishopric of Liége—closely related districts—the making of glass had probably been carried on continuously from Roman times. In the Ardennes, and especially in the forests of Argonnes and in the Vosges, the manufacture early took on a purely industrial character. At the end of the sixteenth century it was claimed by the glass-makers of the last district that they supplied Switzerland, the Low Countries, and England with glass; and we shall see later on that it was from glass-workers from Lorraine, more definitely from the western Vosges, that we in England learned so much in the later sixteenth century. These Lorrainers owed their chief fame to their skill in making window-panes and mirrors, and the old tradition may be held to be still carried on in the great glass-works at Baccarat, near Lunéville.
I have no space to follow the working of the new methods in Poitou and in the south, but a few words may be said of the glass-houses established at Nevers in the sixteenth century. At that time the dukedom of the Nivernais was held by the Gonzaga family of Mantua, who had already acquired the marquisate of Montferrat, upon which the town of L’Altare was dependent. Louis of Gonzaga, who died in 1595, was as a patron of the arts quite abreast of his time, and we may note that besides his possessions in France and Italy he held much land in Flanders and the Liége country, and that he was married to a princess of the house of Cleves. The old town of Nevers became for a time an artistic centre of some importance. In the handsome renaissance palace built in part by this said Louis (his arms are to be seen carved in bold relief on the walls), there is now gathered together an important collection of the enamelled fayence for which the town is famous, and also a few examples of the local glass, but none of this last is, I think, of so early a date as the sixteenth century. Altarists had doubtless come to Nevers before the time of the Duke Louis, but it was during his rule that the Saroldo family settled here, a family famous especially for their skill in the use of glass enamels. To the Saroldo succeeded the Ponta family; and in the seventeenth century Jean Castellano came from Liége: in addition to these Altarists, Venetian workmen were employed at times. It is, indeed, a noticeable fact that here in the very centre of France these glass-works should, for something like two hundred years, have been dependent upon Italian workmen.
FRENCH GLASS OF RENAISSANCE
1. STATUETTE OF LOUIS XIV. COLOURED ENAMELS 2. MAN WITH MUFF. ON STAND OF DRESDEN PORCELAIN 3. BURETTE OF SPLASHED GLASS
The glass of Nevers acquired some general renown in the seventeenth century. Thomas Corneille, the younger brother of the great dramatist, calls the town a ‘petit Murane de Venise,’ and praises the ‘variété des divers ouvrages de verre qui s’y font et qu’on transporte dans toutes les provinces de la France.’ In this case—quite exceptionally as regards France—we can associate a special genre or application of glass—a somewhat trifling one, to be sure—with the local glass-houses. In the already mentioned museum in the Ducal Palace may be seen some of these ‘gentillesses a’émail propres à orner les cabinets, les cheminées et les armoires.’ Here may be found landscape scenes with cows and shepherdesses built up of fragments of glass of various colours,—these childish compositions are apparently executed with the blow-pipe. We are told in the journal of Jean Héroard, the physician to Louis XIII., that when that king was a child he amused himself with certain ‘petits chiens de verre et autres animaux faits à Nevers.’ Among the scanty specimens of French glass in the British Museum are some quaint little figures, about four inches in height, built up of coloured glass enamels. We see there a little statuette of Louis XIV. strutting along attired as a Roman emperor; there is another of St. James the Apostle. These characteristic examples of verroterie may very plausibly be referred to the glass-blowers of Nevers at the end of the seventeenth century[[173]] ([Plate XXXV.] 1).
The province of Normandy has played a not unimportant part in the history of glass. It was from the Norman duchy and from Brittany, according to the tradition preserved at L’Altare, that the glass-workers wandered forth in the tenth or eleventh century to find a more peaceable home at L’Altare, in the mountains above the Ligurian coast. As early as the year 1302 we hear of the famous glass-house at La Haye, in the forest of Lyons, near Rouen. This is in a charter which mentions incidentally the bracken, the ‘feucheriam ad faciendum vitrum’—for all this early glass was, as I have said, verre de fougère—which was to be cut only at specified times. It was here, about the year 1330, that Philippe de Cacqueray is said to have first made the plasts de verre, otherwise known as verre de France,[[174]] for long the most important product of the Norman glass-houses. These plasts were indeed merely small sheets of glass, with a thickening or ‘bull’s-eye’ in the centre; they were made by the familiar ‘spinning’ process, which, however, must surely have been known before the fourteenth century. In any case this verre de France was widely exported at a later time, and much of it must have found its way into England.[[175]] It would appear that the gentlemen of the grosses verreries where this window-glass was made, held their heads above those of petites verreries which turned out only ‘hollow ware,’ and this fact would point to the outcome of the latter works not being of a very superior kind. If, however, we may judge from the examples reproduced by M. Gerspach (L’Art de la Verrerie, figs. 104-113) from the collection of M. le Breton, who has done for Norman glass what M. Fillon has done for that of Poitou, the table-ware made in Normandy during the seventeenth century possessed no little artistic merit, and what is more, it had a cachet of its own.
In the seventeenth century, however, the history of glass in France centres round the manufacture of plate-glass by the new process of coulage or casting. After the middle of the century a demand arose in France for large sheets of clear glass, not so much for windows, it would seem, as for the tall mirrors that were now coming into fashion, and again for the portières of the ‘glass-coaches’ of the nobility. Colbert, the great minister of the early and glorious days of Louis XIV., was in despair because the large panes of glass suitable for these purposes had to be obtained from Venice or from Nuremberg. After an unsuccessful attempt to establish a colony of Muranese workmen in Paris, Colbert had recourse to a Norman family of glass-makers, the De Néhou, who had lately succeeded the De Cacqueray at Tourlaville, near Cherbourg. It was in 1675 that Louis Lucas de Néhou was put in charge of the royal glass-works at Paris, where he perfected his great discovery of the method of casting glass. He was able to turn out sheets of unprecedented size by a process in which the ‘metal’ was poured upon frames, spread out evenly by rollers, and subsequently polished.
The Manufacture Royale des Glaces was removed in 1693 to the Château de St. Gobain, not far from Laon. The St. Gobain works have for two hundred years held a pre-eminent position in Europe for the manufacture of plate-glass. This subject of plate-glass is indeed a little outside our limits: for the student of the architecture and the decorative arts of the eighteenth century it is, however, one of no little importance.
I have been able to do little more than select a few examples that have seemed to me of especial interest from the well-filled records of the French glass-workers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many important centres have been passed over without comment,—Nantes, for instance, frequented above all by the Altarists; and Poitou, the source, according to M. Fillon, of many of the finest extant examples of French enamelled glass. In both these districts members of the Saroldo family settled—in Brittany they were prominent for over two centuries.
In Paris, or rather in the Isle de France, the glass-works of St. Germain-en-Laye were for a time under direct royal patronage. It was there, soon after 1552, that Teseo Mutio made for Henri II. ‘verres, myroirs et canons.’[[176]] Although the king pronounced Mutio’s work to be equal to that of the Venetians, these glass-houses had but a short life.
In 1604 a special commission was appointed in Paris to deal with the difficulty that arose from the obstinate refusal of the Altarists to teach the French apprentices the secrets of their craft. It was proposed to get over this obstacle by the naturalisation of the Italians, but to judge from the continued importation of fresh batches of foreigners, this measure had but little practical result.
But what examples, it may be asked, can we point to that would throw light on the nature of the glass made during these centuries by this succession of Italians, to say nothing of the production of the native gentilshommes? Nowhere in France, as far as I know, is there to be found anything in the nature of a representative collection to illustrate the history of native glass. The nearest approach is no doubt to be discovered in the scattered examples in the Louvre, and above all in the Hôtel de Cluny, where there are many curious specimens of the French enamelled glass of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
It is to the Venetian enamelled glass of the fifteenth century, to the goblets of the coppa nuziale class, that we must go back to find the prototype of what is by far the most interesting family of French glass. In France these verres à pied, enamelled with portrait-heads or symbolical figures, continued in vogue well into the seventeenth century, long after the fashion for such work had passed away at Venice. The enamelling itself on this French glass is not remarkable for brilliancy, but there is often some native verve in the treatment of the figures, and a true Gallic ring about the mottoes and verses that accompany them. Of these ‘devises, souhaits, proverbes, dédicaces, vers et maximes,’ we may distinguish two classes: in the one case they are of a more or less gallant character, or contain personal references; in the other a religious sentiment or a pious quotation is found, generally of such a nature as to suggest that the original owner belonged to the reformed church. It is sometimes difficult nowadays to seize the connection between the device and the subject which it accompanies. Thus on a fine stemless goblet in the Musée de Cluny we see three halberdiers standing as on sentry duty; the accompanying motto, ‘En la sueur de ton visaige tu mangeras le pain,’ has been interpreted as referring to the hard life of the soldier. Of a more gallant character are the figures and devices on a goblet of yellow enamelled glass in the British Museum (Slade, No. 824). A gentleman in the costume of the time of Henri II. offers a flower to a lady with the remark, ‘JE SUIS A VOVS.’ The latter—she holds a padlocked heart in her hand—replies ‘MÕ CUER AVÉS.’ In addition to these figures we see a goat (bouc) drinking from a vase, and this we may connect with the inscription that encircles the bowl—‘JE SVIS A VOVS JEHAN BOUCAU ET ANTOYNETE BOUC.’ This is doubtless a marriage cup, and the name Boucau points, it is said, to a Provençal origin.
As in our country, though in a somewhat less degree, the Gothic feeling in design lingered long in France, at least in the more remote provinces. An enamelled glass basin, preserved in the museum at Rennes (figured by M. Gerspach, p. 199), bears round the margin in large Gothic letters the words—PRION ⁝ DIEU ⁝ QUI ⁝ NOUS ⁝ PARDON ⁝ 1597. On the ground of the style of decoration, to say nothing of the lettering, this bowl might well, in the absence of the date, have been referred to the fifteenth century.
Perhaps the oldest example that has been preserved of this French enamelled glass is the tazza in the Cluny Museum, with the arms of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany. This cup must date from the early years of the sixteenth century.
There is one variety of enamelled glass, Venetian in its origin, which we in England generally associate with France, although there are scant references to it in the French authors who have described the glass of their country. I refer to the ‘splashed’ glass, an old method of decoration indeed, for we have found something very like it on certain little unguent vases of the ancient Egyptians. In the present case the enamels—red, yellow, blue, and white—lie in oval masses on the surface, reminding one in some cases of the sections of the pebbles on a piece of polished pudding-stone. How these enamels were splashed on to the unfinished paraison has been already described (p. [64]). I may add that the little barrel-shaped flask (the barillet or bariz of the old writers) to which this decoration is sometimes applied, is a characteristic French form.
Among the French glass in the British Museum may be seen some little scent-bottles or burettes of moulded glass, decorated with fleurs-de-lis in relief. These are generally attributed to a certain Bernard Perrot of Orleans, to whom, in 1662, extensive privileges were granted by Colbert. We are told by a contemporary writer (Abraham du Pradel, Livre Commode, 1691) that this Perrot imitated agates and gems as well as the porcelain of China, and that he cast his glass into moulds to obtain bas-reliefs and other ornaments. This early reference to the copying of porcelain by means of opaque white glass is of some interest. I do not know what precise source has been found for the little cups of this milky glass of which there are some examples among the French glass in the British Museum—they are painted with a rudely executed floral decoration of a somewhat Oriental type—but they may without doubt be connected with one of the many attempts made at this time or somewhat later to imitate the porcelain of the Far East. This opaque white French glass should be compared with a very similar ware made at Barcelona, of which something will be said in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XV
THE RENAISSANCE GLASS OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS AND OF SPAIN
Before going on to speak of the glass made in Spain, it will be well to say a few words of that made in the Spanish Netherlands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Here, as might be expected from the course of trade, the Venetian influence was early felt, and before long became predominant. In the northern provinces, on the other hand, the old Teutonic traditions, both as to form and material, continued on the whole unchanged to a much later period, so that the glass of the United Provinces will be best dealt with in connection with that of Germany.
Already in the fourteenth century the Venetian galleys brought the glass of Murano to the Flemish ports. In some cases this glass was held worthy of being mounted in silver. A goblet and an aiguière are mentioned in an inventory of 1379 as the property of Charles V. of France. These pieces are indeed described as ‘voirres blants de Flandre’: it is, however, very probable that they came in the first place from Venice.
As early as 1541 Venetian glass-workers were settled at Antwerp, but, as in France, the great invasion took place shortly after the middle of the century. It must be borne in mind that what we know of the wanderings of these gentilshommes de verre from Venice and from L’Altare is derived almost exclusively from the researches of Belgian antiquaries and archivistes. In the already quoted works of Houday, of Pinchart, and above all in the earlier and later letters of the Belgian judge, the President Schuermans, we have a wealth of information. M. Schuermans has traced these Italian glass-workers to Antwerp, to Brussels, to Namur, to Liége, Maestricht and Huy, and in the northern provinces to Bois-le-Duc, Middelburg, Haarlem, and Amsterdam. There was a great rivalry between the Muranese, who on the whole predominated at Antwerp, and the Altarists, whom we find for the most part at Liége: these were the two most important centres. The Low Countries indeed became before long a second home to these Italians, whence they wandered out again to France, England, and Spain.
While at Antwerp the true Venetian cristallo was imported free of duty, the imitations of that glass, the voirre de cristal, à la faschion de Venise, made over the French frontier at Mézières or in Germany, and often difficult to distinguish from the originals, were strictly excluded, and these fiscal regulations were enforced by the most tyrannical measures. The case is well put by Mr. Hartshorne: ‘There were,’ he says, ‘in the Low Countries in the beginning of the seventeenth century, real Venetian glasses imported from Venice, Venetian glasses legally made in the Low Countries, those illegally made, and foreign imitations of Venetian glass’ (Old English Glasses, p. 39). Apart from these varieties of cristallo glass, the old verre de fougère doubtless continued to be manufactured.
Before the end of the sixteenth century, the glass-houses of Antwerp where glass à la façon de Venise was made had acquired a European reputation. They stood quite apart from the other furnaces in France or in the Netherlands where Italians were employed. Lodovico Guicciardini, the historian of the Netherlands, speaks as early as 1567 of the ‘vassella di vetro alla Veneziana’ made in Antwerp, and in the later editions of his work (Descrizione di Tutti Paesi Bassi) some further details are given. The testimony of another Florentine, Neri, from whose little book on glass I have already quoted, is still stronger. It was at Antwerp, he tells us, not at Venice, that he had studied the processes of glass-making.
If Antwerp thus early held a commanding position in Spanish Flanders, in the Walloon country the glass-houses of Liége in the course of the seventeenth century grew to a position of even greater importance. This was due above all to the enterprise of the great firm of the De Bonhommes, who before the end of the century had almost a monopoly of the glass trade in those parts: they even established subsidiary works beyond the frontier in such places as Verdun. They were one of the first on the Continent to see the importance of the new English flint-glass; at all events it is recorded that as early as 1680 they made flint-glass à l’Anglaise,[[177]] and were thus able to withstand the Bohemian[[178]] competition which at that time was carrying everything before it.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Bohemian engraved glass was copied in both the Walloon and Flemish parts of what is now Belgium. Indeed when the latter district fell under Austrian rule early in the eighteenth century, there was naturally a tendency to encourage Bohemian methods of decoration. Specimens of this engraved glass may be seen in the museums of many Belgian towns, but I have seen nothing to equal, in spirit and high finish, the contemporary engraved glass of the United Provinces. As for the earlier cristallo made at Antwerp, say from 1550 to 1650, the difficulty is to distinguish, in the case of the specimens that have survived, the local work from that imported from Venice, and we have evidence that even at the time the native experts could not always do so.[[179]]
I must in conclusion just say one word about a source of information for the sixteenth and seventeenth century glass of the Low Countries which is for the most part wanting in the case of other countries. We have seen how little can be learned from the works of contemporary Venetian painters, of the famous glass of Murano (p. [202]). But in the north it is quite otherwise; not only in the pictures of the still-life painters, but in genre scenes, and sometimes even in paintings of a devotional character, we meet with carefully drawn examples of glass. It thus happens that the works of the Flemish and Dutch painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throw a great deal of light upon the kinds of glass to be found both in the village alehouses and on the buffets of the wealthy. We can take note of the competition of the old heavy Teutonic forms with the Italian cristallo, a competition which continued in force during all this period.
It is, however, from a work of the Cologne school, from a picture of the early sixteenth century, now in the Louvre, representing the Last Supper,[[180]] that I will take my first example. Here on the table we see a decanter with tall neck, delicately gadrooned, of distinctly Venetian type. The drinking-glasses also are apparently of cristallo of the well-known fifteenth-century form, without stem or knop. The cup of Christ alone has a cover. But there are also on the table several cups or beakers of a deep green glass, studded with small bosses—‘prunted’ glass, in fact, of a pure Teutonic type.
These two families of glass may be traced, often side by side, in much later works—in the pictures of the Flemish and Dutch schools of the seventeenth century. In the paintings of the former school, however, a clear white glass soon becomes prevalent even in humble surroundings. In the cabaret scenes of Teniers, the peasant drinks his beer from a tall hexagonal glass of thick whitish metal. The wine is kept in spherical long-necked flasks—a very old type which we have often met with in our history—a plug of rolled paper taking the place of a cork; it is drunk from wide-mouthed conical glasses of thin white metal. Similar glasses appear indeed in the pictures of the Dutch painters (as in more than one painting by Metsu and De Hooghe in the National Gallery). But in Holland, in the seventeenth century, the dark green or almost black prunted goblets of roemer type were apparently held in even greater estimation. In the famous terrace scene of Jan Steen (National Gallery, No. 1421), the wine, which is kept in a large pear-shaped glass vessel with a stopper of wood, is drunk from a small graceful roemer. In J. van de Velde’s still-life in the same collection (No. 1255) we see again a magnificent roemer, of very dark glass, with prunted stem and threaded foot, half filled with Rhenish wine.[[181]] But if we turn again to the Flemish painters of this later time, we find that when in rich interiors they introduce specimens of glass among other objets de vertu, this glass is always of a Venetian type. There is one such painter, a follower of Jan Brueghel apparently, who loves to introduce among a wealth of plate and jewellery, piled on tables and shelves and even on the floor, the most elaborate specimens of the fine cristallo of Venice, proving in what esteem this glass was then held in the Spanish Netherlands. I might give many further examples, but enough has been said to show that as in the case of porcelain, of fayence and of plate, so for the history of glass, a mine of information may be found in the genre and other pictures of the Netherlandish school.
SPANISH GLASS
SEVENTEENTH OR EIGHTEENTH CENTURY