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
Spanish Glass
In the case of France we have seen how vast is the amount of documentary evidence concerning the glass of the renaissance, and how comparatively scanty on the other hand the in every way more satisfactory evidence to be drawn from the examination of existing specimens. Now in the case of Spanish glass these conditions are in some measure reversed. We here find the documentary evidence almost entirely wanting, but we in England, at any rate, have in the British Museum, and more especially at South Kensington, fairly extensive collections of glass from the Peninsula. I will not say that most of the examples are of any great artistic, still less of technical merit. Far too many pieces in the latter collection are but sorry imitations of debased French and English models of the eighteenth century, and even later times. But as we shall see, not a few types, earlier in style if not in actual date, may be distinguished, and these have a distinct local flavour.
This is the case above all with a class of rudely executed vessels that are found in the south of Spain—in Murcia, Andalucia, and Granada. The metal itself is of a primitive type, of various shades of green and bluish-green. Indeed, one of the points of interest in this South Spanish glass is to be found in the fact that it is essentially a glass of the people: it is a survival from mediæval times, and it thus throws light upon the long extinct verre de fougère or wald-glas that was made all over the west of Europe before the introduction of the Venetian cristallo. Not that this Spanish glass is necessarily of the inland or potash family; we are here in a Mediterranean country, and the alkali has probably been found in the native soda-holding barilla. The shapes taken by this rude glass of the south of Spain often resemble those found in the local pottery; one is reminded at times of the graceful water-jars that are indeed common to nearly all the Mediterranean coast. A Moorish origin has been found for some of these forms, but we may perhaps go further back and call them Byzantine. The most characteristic shape is a vase with spherical body and with a tall expanding neck in the form of a truncated cone; neck and body are united by a series of handles, often eight or more in number ([Plate XXXVI.]). Now not only these handles, with their upper and lower attachments worked while hot by the pincers into toothed and crested forms, but the whole of the appliqué ornaments of the vessel—the threadings and the rude floral reliefs—take one back to a very old plan of decoration. This was a style much in favour in later Roman times—it is one that is perhaps per se the most characteristic and natural of all methods of treating the surface of glass. A similar many-handled vase is a common type among the peasant pottery of the same districts of Southern Spain; on this we find the same ring of handles, while the appliqué threadings and rosettes of the glass are replaced by a similarly applied slip ornament. This pottery is still manufactured for local use, but I do not know whether any of the rude green glass is produced at the present day.
We have little or no information about the glass made in Spain during the Moorish domination. There is a vague tradition that the manufacture was carried on in Murcia and Andalucia, and Al Makari, the historian, states on the authority of an author of the thirteenth century, that Almeria was famous for its vessels of glass as well as for those of iron and copper.[[182]]