The French goldsmith-engravers, who produced designs in the "silhouette" manner intended for jewels that were to be enamelled by the champlevé method, include Jehan Vovert (1602), an anonymous engraver A. D. (1608), Jacques Hurtu (1614-1619), Stephanus Carteron of Châtillon (1615), Pierre Nolin (1620), and Jean Toutin (1619) and his son Henri (1628).
The most important of these is the goldsmith and enameller Jean Toutin of Châteaudun, whose plates—six in number, dated 1618 and 1619—are filled with charming motives for watch-cases or lockets, to be carried out in enamel. They are ornamented with patterns reserved in white on black ground in the form of trailing leaves and tendrils, partly in the "pea-pod" style, and accompanied by lively genre figures in various attitudes. Perhaps the most attractive of these plates is that which represents a jeweller—probably Toutin himself—firing a jewel which he holds in the furnace by a pair of long tongs, while above is figured a model of the actual jewel—an octagonal box-like pendant (p. 289).
Toutin, who appears to have been an experimenter in enamels, is entitled to distinction as the discoverer of a new process of using them. The process consisted in covering a plate of gold or copper with an opaque monochromatic enamel, on which designs were painted with colours, opaque and fusible, and of greater variety than had previously been employed. This method of enamel painting, extensively used for jewellery, proved to be peculiarly suitable to the representation of natural flowers which came into high favour about the same time.
The employment of naturalistic flower designs, as displayed on the margins of manuscripts, was one of the features of late Gothic art. The same tendency with regard to flowers was manifested on the enamelled jewellery of the fifteenth century, the most striking example of which is the wonderful necklace seen on the Flemish portrait of Maria Baroncelli in the Uffizi Gallery. Renaissance ornaments on the whole did not favour naturalistic floral patterns, though flowers enamelled in full relief are occasionally found, as on the border of the Phœnix Jewel in the British Museum.
The general return in the early part of the seventeenth century to flower designs for the decoration of jewellery is associated with a curious phase in the social history of the time that accompanied the deep interest then taken in flowers and horticulture. Among flowers, of which the Dutch have ever been enthusiastically fond, and never tired of growing and of painting, the most prominent position was occupied by the tulip. From about the year 1634 the cultivation of the tulip became a perfect craze in Holland, and "Tulipomania" like a violent epidemic seized upon all classes of the community. Gambling of an almost unparalleled nature was carried on in the bulbs, and the flower became fashionable everywhere. In the bouquets which the enamellers arranged with great taste, and painted with extraordinary skill, the tulip is always prominent.
This and many other flowers, and occasionally fruits, were painted in the same manner as a picture, on an enamel ground of uniform colour—generally white, and sometimes pale blue, yellow, or black. Small plaques enamelled and painted thus are popularly known by the name of "Louis Treize" enamels, though the majority of them were produced after Louis XIII's death in 1643.
About 1640 it became the custom occasionally to model the design in relief with a paste of white enamel, which was afterwards painted with vitreous colours according to nature. Towards the middle of the century the background of the flowers was pierced and cut away, so that every single flower, exquisitely modelled and coloured, stood out by itself. In addition to tulips of every variety, and hyacinths, sunflowers, and roses, all kinds of lilies were in favour, especially the tiger-lily, the "crown imperial," and different species of fritillaries, whose beautifully spotted or chequered blossoms were rendered in their natural colours with striking fidelity. Flowers executed in this realistic style for jewellery were arranged chiefly in garlands and festoons, in the manner of the wreaths painted by Jan Brueghel round several of Rubens' pictures, the flower pieces of such Dutch and Flemish painters as Jan de Heem, Van den Hecke, Daniel Seghers, and Van Thielen, and the wood carvings of Grinling Gibbons (himself Dutch by birth), which display the same remarkable realism.
Among the goldsmiths and draughtsmen of the time who have left designs for jewels in painted enamel are the Germans Heinrich Raab and Johann Paulus Hauer, both goldsmiths of Nuremberg. Their engravings, with natural flower ornamentation very finely designed and executed, were published about 1650. They comprise crosses, étuis, scissor, watch, and scent cases, and pendants—star- and bow-shaped, and set each with a pendent pearl. Work in the same direction by the artists of the French school is of great importance. Gédéon Légaré, though he practised the pea-pod style, is the first to show a decided preference for natural flowers in his engravings, which date from about 1640. He is followed by three famous masters of flower ornament—Balthazar Moncornet, Gilles Légaré, and Jean Vauquer. Vauquer worked at Blois between 1670 and 1700, and like many other engravers of jewellers' designs, was a jeweller and enamel painter by profession. He was a pupil of Morlière of Orleans, who also worked at Blois. His fine plates of flowers and ornamental foliage, engraved after his own designs and entitled Livre de fleurs propres pour orfévres et graveurs, were published in 1680.[175] Vauquer was an enamel painter of pre-eminent ability, and one of the greatest exponents of the day of the art of representing natural flowers.
Of the designs of Moncornet (c. 1670) and Gilles Légaré (c. 1663) for jewelled ornaments we have already spoken. Moncornet, a great lover of flowers, accompanied his jewels by charming garlands. With him and Vauquer and Légaré must be associated the renowned enamel painter Jean Petitot (1607-1691), who was first an enameller of jewellery. So highly skilled was he as a painter of flower designs and foliage on rings and other ornaments, that on going over to England in 1635 he entered at once into the service of Charles I, where he brought to perfection his famous enamelled portraits.
Several actual examples have survived of the enamel-work of Gilles Légaré, whose designs—the best-known of this time—reveal a charming feeling for natural flower ornaments. His chef d'œuvre is generally considered to be the garland of flowers painted in enamel in open-work relief that surrounds a miniature by Petitot of the Countess d'Olonne in the collection of Major Holford at Dorchester House. This splendid piece, on which the tints of the flowers are rendered with striking fidelity, was formerly in the collection of a great French connoisseur of the eighteenth century, P. J. Mariette. At his death it passed into the possession of Horace Walpole, who counted it as one of his special treasures. It joined the Dorchester House collection after the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842. If this magnificent enamel-work be by the hand of Légaré, and we may take Mariette's word for it that it is,[176] this clever craftsman must have worked for Petitot; for another very fine example of the same kind of work, a wreath of enamelled flowers finely modelled and painted, surrounds a miniature by Petitot in the possession of the Earl of Dartrey.