§ XII. OF DECORATIVE OBJECTS.
A great number of small objects in lead are in our museums, and first we should mention the medals and plaques of the great masters of the Renaissance. Lead will cast with more delicacy than any other material, and Cellini especially recommended it for proofs. The proofs of the great work of the medallists,—the modelling just a film, fading into the background—presentments and allegories of the Malatestas and Gonzagas by Pisanello and Sperandio, are certainly the most precious things ever formed in lead. There are a great number of these medals and decorative plaques in the British Museum and at Kensington.
For coins in lead see Gaetani and Fiscorni. For tokens and pilgrim badges, of which a great number have been found in the Seine, see Gazette des Beaux Arts, Vol. VI. and XVIII. Some of these remind us of the lead figures that, according to “Quentin Durward,” Louis XI. wore in his hat. At the Guildhall there is a collection of hundreds of these small objects found in the Thames; most are of great delicacy, many very beautiful. There are, in the British Museum, little Greek objects, rings and toys, armlets of a snake pattern, and pierced ornaments for applying to other objects.
Other objects in the Kensington Museum are:—A small tankard only two and a half inches diameter but modelled with figures in low relief, it is German of the sixteenth or seventeenth century; a pair of little inkstands the circular drums modelled with foliage and projecting top and bottom rims, also German; and a square canister with panel of St. George on each face.
Another is a beautiful little Gothic box of the fourteenth century. It is hexagonal, with three feet, a flat hinged cover has a sitting lion which forms the knob, a slight relief of the Annunciation under a canopy, and two shields of arms. Round the sides are delicate bands of foliage and Gothic lettering; it is three and a half inches high, and of cast lead. There are other portions of little Gothic boxes in the British Museum. At Gloucester Museum there is a square box of late fifteenth century work, the sides formed of four cast panels of lead, soldered at the angles. The panels all repeat the same relief of the dead Christ and the Virgin, right and left are the other two Marys, and the background bears the cross, crown, spears, dice, and all the implements of the Passion.[23] Small canisters, and candlesticks the stems of which are formed of a little lead figure, were made quite recently.