But quaint and fanciful as were the works of the Parisian goldsmiths, they were outdone by the grotesque designs of the German artificers. They invented drinking-cups of the strangest form, the whole animal kingdom, fabulous and real, birds, and sea-monsters, were constructed to hold liquids. A table laid out with an abundance of this strangely-designed plate, must have had a ludicrous effect. Many of their works, though costly in character, refined in execution, and thoroughly artistic in detail, are absolute caricatures. There is one in Lord Londesborough’s collection, and another in that of Baron Rothschild, made in the form of a bagpipe; the bag holds wine, and is supported on human feet; arms emerge from the sides and play on the chanter, which is elongated from the nose of a grotesque face, the hair a mass of foliage. Dozens of similar examples might be cited, of the most extraordinary invention, which the metal-workers of the seventeenth century particularly gave their imaginations licence to construct. Indeed, the German artists of that period seem to have had a spice of lunacy in their compositions, and the works of Breughel were rivalled and outdone by many others whose fancies were of most unearthly type. Salvator Rosa in Italy, and Callot in France, occasionally depicted what their grotesque and mystic imaginings suggested, and Teniers gave the world witch-pictures; but for the wild and wondrous, Germany has always carried the palm from the rest of the world in art as in literature.
Fig. 71. | Fig. 72. |
We engrave a fine example of a vase handle ([Fig. 71]), apparently the work of an Italian goldsmith at the early part of the seventeenth century. The bold freedom of the design is utilised here by the upheaved figure grasped by the monster, and which gives hold and strength to the handle; the flowing character throughout the composition accords well with the general curve of the vase to which it is affixed. There is a prevailing elegance in the Italian grotesque design which is not seen in that of other nations. The knife handle by Francisco Salviati, which we have also selected for engraving ([Fig. 72]), is a favourable example of this feeling; nothing can be more outré than the figure of the monster which crowns the design; yet for the purpose of utility, as a firm hold to the handle, it is unobjectionable; while the graceful convolutions of the neck, and the flow of line in the figure, combined with this monster, give a certain quaint grace to the design, which is further relieved by enriched foliage.
With one specimen of the later work of the silversmith, we take our leave of grotesque design as applied to art-manufacture; but that work is as whimsical as any we have hitherto seen. It is a pair of silver sugar-tongs ([Fig. 73]), evidently a work of the conclusion of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. It is composed of the figure of Harlequin, who upholds two coiled serpents, forming handles; the body moves on a central pivot, fastened at the girdle, and the right arm and left leg move with the front, as do the others with the back of the body, which is formed by a double plate of silver, the junctures being ingeniously hidden by the chequers of the dress.
We have already had occasion to allude to the adoption of grotesque design in book illustrations, it is often seen in manuscripts, and abounds in early printed works. When wood engraving was extensively applied to the enrichment of the books which issued in abundance from the presses of Germany and France, the head and tail-pieces of chapters gave great scope to the fancies of the artists of Frankfort and Lyons. The latter city became remarkable for the production of elegantly illustrated volumes, which have never been surpassed. Our concluding cuts represent one of these tail-pieces ([Fig. 74]), in which a fanciful mask combines with scroll-work; and a head-piece ([Fig. 75]), (one half only being given), where the grotesque element pervades the entire composition to an unusual extent, without an offensive feature. Yet it would not be easy to bring together a greater variety of heterogeneous admixtures than it embraces. Fish, beasts, insects, and foliage, combine with the human form to complete its ensemble. The least natural of the group is the floriated fish, whose general form has evidently been based on that of the dolphin. When Hogarth ridiculed the taste for virtu, which the fashionable people of his own era carried to a childish extent, and displayed its follies in his picture of “Taste in high life,” and in the furniture of his scenes of the “Marriage-à-la-mode,” he exhibited a somewhat similar absurdity in porcelain ornament. In the second scene of the “Marriage” is an amusing example of false combination, in which a fat Chinese is embowered in foliage, above whom floats in air a brace of fish, which emerge from the leaves, and seem to be diving at the lighted candles. Hogarth’s strong sense of the ludicrous was always pertinently displayed in such good-humoured satire.