BERNARD PALISSY THE POTTER.
Bernard Palissy was born, about 1510, in the little town of Biron, in Périgord, France. He became not only a great artist, but a learned physician, and a writer of merit.
Born of poor parents of the working-class, he had to learn some trade, and early applied himself to working glass, not as a glazier, but staining it and cutting it up in little bits, to be joined together with lead for the colored windows so much used in churches. This was purely mechanical work; but Bernard's ambition led him to study drawing and color, that he might himself design and execute, in glass, scenes from the Bible and lives of the saints, such as he saw done by his superiors.
When he was old enough, curious to see the world and learn new things, he took a journey on foot through several provinces of France, by observation thus supplying the defects of his early education, and reaping a rich harvest of facts and ideas, which developed the qualities of his intelligence.
It was at this time that the Renaissance in Art was making itself felt throughout Europe. Francis I. of France encouraged all forms of good work by his patronage; and wherever he went the young Palissy was animated and inspired by the sight of beautiful things.
Faience, an elegant kind of pottery, attracted his attention. This appeared first in the fourteenth century. The Arabs had long known the art of making tiles of clay, enamelled and richly ornamented. They brought it into Spain, as is shown in the decorations of the Alhambra at Seville and elsewhere. Lucca della Robbia in Italy first brought the art to perfection, by making figures and groups of figures in high relief, of baked clay covered with shining enamel, white, tinted with various colors. The kind of work called majolica differed from the earlier faience by some changes in the material used for the enamel. In the middle of the sixteenth century remarkable historical paintings were executed in faience, upon huge plaques. All the cities of Italy vied with each other in producing wonders in this sort of work; it is from one of them, Faenza, that it takes its name. The method of making the enamel was a deep secret; but Bernard Palissy, with long patience and after many failures, succeeded in discovering it,—or, rather, in inventing for himself a new method, which in some respects excelled the old.
Palissy was the author of several essays, or "Discourses;" and from one of these, written in quaint old French, we have his own account of his invention.
He married and settled down in the year 1539 with a good income from his intelligent industry. He had a pleasant little house in the country, where, as he says, "I could rejoice in the sight of green hills, where were feeding and gambolling lambs, sheep, and goats."
An incident, apparently slight, disturbed this placid domestic happiness. He came across a cup of enamelled pottery, doubtless from Italy. "This cup," he says, "was of such beauty, that, from the moment I saw it, I entered into a dispute with myself as to how it could have been made."
Enamel is nothing more than a kind of glaze colored with metallic acids, and rendered opaque by the mixture of a certain quantity of tin. It is usually spread upon metal, when only it is properly called enamel; but this glaze can also be put upon earthenware. It makes vessels water-tight, and gives them brilliancy of surface. To find out how to do this was to make a revolution in the keramic art.