In the work of some of the finest painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so masterly is the handling, that in the contemplation of broad effects one may fail to notice how much detail the artists were able to combine with such breadth. In fact the detail they displayed is hardly less precise than that of the earlier painters. Mr. Davies[190] has some interesting remarks to make on the different modes of depicting jewellery adopted by first-class painters—by the one who paints it in detail and the other who treats it with freedom. "The first paints you, touch by touch, his chains, his bracelets, his tiara, link by link, and gem by gem, with precision so great that if you called in a fairly capable goldsmith, of little or no intelligence, he would use them as a pattern and produce you an exact facsimile. The second obtains his result by summarized knowledge, letting his line lose itself and find itself again, a flash on a link, a sparkle on a gem suggesting all to the eye with a completeness which is fully as complete as the literal word for word translation of the other man. Call in a really intelligent goldsmith to this work and he would find it quite as easy as, or even easier than, the other to understand and reproduce from, but it would not do to make a tracing from, nor give as a pattern to one of his unintelligent apprentices."
Very attractive and valuable guides to the jewellery of the early period are the early Flemish-Burgundian paintings (p. 90), and those of the Italian masters of the fifteenth century (p. 167). The most fertile of sixteenth-century pictures for the present purpose are the German (p. 189), as may be judged from Herr Luthmer's Goldschmuck der Renaissance, in which are reproduced in colours a number of specimens of jewellery figured in contemporary pictures. In the second half of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth, the painters of the Low Countries especially excelled in the delineation of jewel forms. Among these artists are Sir Antonio More, Peter Pourbus, Lucas de Heere, Zucchero, Marc Gheeraerts, D. Mytens, Van Somer, and Janssens. By these and by numerous followers of Holbein, many pictures were painted, and exist in England at the present day. The technique of the great Dutch and Flemish painters of the seventeenth century, even of such as Frans Hals, was not incompatible, as Mr. Davies has shown, with the clear representation of personal ornaments.
The majority of pictures of the early part of the eighteenth century offer but slight indication of the jewellery of the time. The conventional style of portraiture which then found favour did not allow such individual characteristics as personal ornaments to obtain a place in the portrait. In the canons for painters laid down by C. A. Du Fresnoy of Paris, entitled De arte graphica, which ruled artists of the first half of the eighteenth century, it was particularly enjoined that "portraits should not be overladen with gold and jewels." "The portrait painters," as Reynolds expressed it in speaking of his predecessors as far back as Lely and Kneller, "had a set of postures (and ornaments too) which they applied to all persons indiscriminately."
Seeing the reliance that may be placed on the jewellery figured in the portraits of earlier times, it is not unnatural to expect such detail to be of considerable service in art criticism. In the identification of a portrait much may rest on the identification of its jewels: for "a portrait," as Mr. Andrew Lang says, "with the jewels actually owned by the subject, if not 'the rose' (for it may be a copy of a lost original) has certainly been 'near the rose.'" But critics seldom think of examining the numerous extant royal and noble inventories and other documents such as wills containing lists of jewels, and of comparing the jewels described in them with those displayed in portraits.
This method, neglected as a rule in criticism, has been employed by Mr. Lang with conspicuous success in his Portraits and jewels of Mary Stuart, and has served to identify the remarkable portrait of the Scottish Queen in the possession of Lord Leven and Melville. Interesting as it is when the jewels depicted in the portraits are identical with those described in their owners' inventories, it is even more so when the actual jewels thus represented have survived to the present day, such as is the case with the Penruddock Jewel shown in Lucas de Heere's portrait of Sir George Penruddock; the Drake Jewel in Zucchero's portrait of Sir Francis Drake; the Lyte Jewel in the portrait of Mr. Thomas Lyte; the earring of Charles I belonging to the Duke of Portland, shown in Van Dyck's portraits; and the earrings of Henrietta Maria in Lord Clifford's possession, shown in portraits of her painted by the same artist.
CHAPTER XXXVI
FRAUDS AND FORGERIES
OWING to the important position that jewellery occupies in the domain of virtu, it is natural that it should receive particular attention at the hands of the fraudulent. On the question of frauds of jewellery we have to distinguish between forgeries—articles professing to be genuine ancient works of art—and counterfeits—imitations of real objects. Long before the forger, as we define him, set to work on the field of jewellery, there existed the business of the imitator of precious stones and precious metals—one of counterfeit rather than of forgery.