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.