Jewellery

by H. Clifford Smith

ONE aspect of the present subject, more attractive perhaps than any other, is that which concerns the representation of personal ornaments in pictures. Scarcely as yet have pictures been fully appreciated from the point of view of their utility to antiquaries or the light they throw upon matters of historical inquiry. The important part which from the fifteenth century onwards they have played in connection with the subject of jewellery is sufficiently attested by the number of times they have already been referred to during the course of the present inquiry.

The truth, reality, and accuracy of the artists' work has eminently contributed to the value of these pictures. A sympathetic way of seeing things and reproducing them and a fine feeling for naturalistic detail is characteristic of all the work of the painters of early times, when a strength of realism made its wholesome influence universally felt. Such works, while they display the grandeur and magnificence of former ages and point out the fashions and customs of our ancestors, show in detail not only the bright splendour of patterned draperies in many materials, but also the shimmer of goldsmith's work in the form of a variety of actual ornaments, now for the most part entirely lost. In this way they set before us details unnoticed by chroniclers, and convey clearer ideas than can be attained by reading the most elaborate descriptive inventories.

The special capability of the early painters for representing articles of jewellery need merely be alluded to again, seeing the close connection already shown, that always existed between them and the goldsmiths, in whose workshops most of them passed their apprenticeship. Every jewelled ornament figured in their works is, in fact, designed with the full knowledge of a goldsmith versed in his craft.

The artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are notorious for the extreme and elaborate minuteness of their painting of jewels. In the portraits of the time careful accuracy in depicting ornaments was the duty, and evidently the delight, of the painter. In every early picture the various details of costume and jewellery are rendered with scrupulous care and refinement. Though placed in the most prominent and decorative positions, jewellery was never, in the best works, allowed to intrude or to occupy an exaggerated place in the composition. For however minutely defined these accessories may be, they are so fused into the general design that they are only apparent if one takes the trouble to look for them.

In addition to recognised masterpieces, there exists a vast number of pictures obviously not by the first masters, which, though of only moderate quality, do not actually offend by their inferiority. These equally well serve to illustrate details of jewellery and dress. In a picture of the first order such details, of importance in themselves, sink into insignificance beside the splendid qualities of a work of art: in less important pictures the ornamental accessories are all in all. It would be of great value to students if all public collections that possess costumes and ornaments could bring together—as has been done with marked success in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg—series of portraits specially chosen to illustrate these details, such portraits, like the actual articles of dress and jewellery, being, of course, old ones, not modern copies.

We may state, in general, that jewels figured in portraits are to be relied upon as being the actual objects possessed by the persons represented. All the early painters displayed, as has been said, a special love for jewel forms. They not only took their beautiful models as they found them, but being themselves mostly masters of the jeweller's craft, they devoted much attention to the adornment and the arrangement of the jewels of their models. It may be urged that painters are apt to indulge their fancy by decorating their sitters with jewels they do not possess, introduced to improve the colour or arrangement of the picture, or introduced in accordance with orders, like those of the good Mrs. Primrose, who expressly desired the painter of her portrait to put in as many jewels as he could for the money, and "not to be too frugal of his diamonds in her stomacher and hair."

It is unlikely, on the contrary, that any of the early painters departed from their usual methods of truth, reality, and accuracy; or, considering the elaborate detail with which they depicted jewellery, that they ever specially invented it for the portrait in which it occurs. It is much more probable that they worked from what they saw: for masters of painting have in all ages worked from models in preference to carrying out their own designs. An instance may be cited of the care which painters paid to the ornaments of their sitters. Preserved in the Archivio di Casa Gerini at Florence are certain unpublished documents[189] of the years 1579 to 1584 relating to the artist Alessandro Allori, in which is a list of the clothes and jewels that had been lent him from the wardrobe of the Grand Duchess, Bianca Cappello, when he was painting her portrait.

One or two of the peculiarities of artists in representing jewellery are worthy of being mentioned. It is to be observed that the presence or absence of gilding on jewellery often serves to distinguish between German and Flemish paintings. Holbein almost always employed gold upon golden objects; but in the works of Mabuse, so rich in elaborate detail, paint alone suffices to produce the effect. The artists of those days possessed a marvellous facility for imitating the brilliance of gold by colour alone.

In examining the jewellery of sixteenth and seventeenth century portraits numbers of what appear to be black stones are frequently to be seen. These were evidently intended to represent diamonds. From early times, when the custom existed of improving, as it was considered, the colour of all stones by the use of foils, diamonds—the old stones of Golconda and Brazil, different in colour and quality from the diamonds of to-day—were usually backed with a black varnish composed of lamp-black and oil of mastic. This tinctura, or colouring of the diamond, which is alluded to by Cellini, would account for the intense and clear blacks and whites used by the artists of the time in depicting that precious stone.