[17] Theophili Presbyteri et Monachi, Libri 3 seu Diversarum artium schedula. Chapter 17.
18. Gold-tooled and inlaid Morocco binding. The Letters of Princess Lieven. By S. T. Prideaux. Modern English.
In the eleventh century we come to the first employment of gold leaf on decorated leather, whence is derived the name, “or basané,” which it afterwards received. The passage describing the process of gilding has been quoted already (page [80]), but each master of the art no doubt introduced his own modifications.
With the introduction of gold, leather decoration assumed a magnificence and importance hitherto unknown. The heads of the saints were surrounded with golden haloes, and the gold and silver embroideries of the sacerdotal ornaments were carried out in those metals on the leather. A little later the knights are represented clad in brilliant armour with plumed helmets. The correct rendering of the heraldic colouring of the coats of arms figuring on shield and target then necessitated the use of a more extended range of oil colours, until, little by little, decorated leather grew to resemble the paintings of Van Orley.
Meanwhile, punches, cut in relief or in intaglio and used with a hammer, were adopted to break the monotony of the groundwork and throw up the relief of the ornament, and the fashion also arose of embossing leather with a modelling tool or by means of stamps, the latter method necessarily resulting in the substitution of repeating ornament for figures and landscapes.
Leather manufactured in Spain, Portugal, Flanders, and later in England is almost always decorated in high relief with touches of gold, the design being principally flowers, foliage, cupids, pomegranates, etc. Venice alone remained faithful to flat decoration with hollowed or merely darkened outline in the cameo-like medallions of classical scenes painted on groundwork whose design was borrowed from the gorgeous stuffs of the East.
The fashion imported from Italy in the reign of Francis I of breaking up surfaces with pilasters, cornices, medallions and ornaments in relief, was instrumental in adding