It remains to draw attention, by means of a beautiful representation of jewellery in painting, to an example of the style of brooch worn in Florence in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The picture referred to is that of the Virgin and Child (No. 296) in the National Gallery. It is apparently the work of Verrocchio, Pollaiuolo, or one of the goldsmith-painters of whom we have spoken; for the minute execution of the ornaments would seem to denote the hand of an artist who had practised the goldsmith's and jeweller's art. The brooch that serves as a fastening for the Virgin's cloak—the same being represented on that of one of the angels—is of most charming design. It has in the centre a table-cut ruby, around which are set four pearls between ornaments in the form of blackberries, surrounded by an outer border of blackberry leaves. So carefully is the jewel drawn that every detail can bear close inspection. A peculiar point of interest is that the pearls, each of which is set in a couple of crutch-like clasps, appear to correspond to the "perles à potences" frequently mentioned in the contemporary jewel inventories of the Dukes of Burgundy.
Brooch worn by the Virgin in fifteenth-century Florentine picture (No. 296, National Gallery, London).
Some measure of compensation for the unfortunate lack of actual examples of Italian Quattrocento jewellery is obtained, apart from their representation in pictures, by the very remarkable use that was made of jewel forms for the marginal decoration of manuscripts. Such enrichments of the borders of missals, etc., by means of painted jewel ornaments, would seem to be but the direct outcome of the system whereby most of the painters, sculptors, architects, and no less eminent miniaturists received their first instruction in art in the workshops of the goldsmiths. It is certain from their quality that the jewels represented in manuscripts, generally in their natural size, are the work of artists well acquainted with the jeweller's art, whose eyes were further impressed by the embroidered edgings of ecclesiastical vestments enriched with jewel ornaments and sewn with pearls and precious stones. In painting with corresponding luxury the border decorations of church missals, the miniaturists have obviously not drawn on their imagination, or constructed jewel forms in a mere haphazard manner. The individual pieces, often complete jewels, are just such as might at the time have been found on the shelves of some goldsmith's workshop.
Among the most skilful of such reproductions of jewels are those in the celebrated choir books of the cathedral of Siena, particularly the pages painted by Liberale di Giacomo da Verona, who worked at Siena from the year 1466. An examination of these illuminations reveals Liberale as an artist thoroughly conversant with the jeweller's craft: so that his work, together with that of his followers, such as the Florentine Giovanni di Giuliano Boccardi, the Dominican Fra Eustachio, Litti di Filippo Corbizi, Monte di Giovanni, Antonio di Girolamo, the famous Attavante, and the various miniaturists of King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary, apart from its charming execution, constitutes a veritable storehouse of information respecting the ornaments of the period. Particularly fine examples of jewelled and enamelled decorations are also contained in choir books in the cathedral of Florence, missals in the Barberini Palace, Rome, a Bible of Mathias Corvinus in the Vatican Library, several books in the Brera at Milan, and the fine Glockendon missal (circa 1540) in the Town Library at Nuremberg. More important perhaps than all is the Grimani Breviary, now in the Library of St. Mark's, Venice. The ornamentation of this famous work, the product of a Flemish artist of the final years of the fifteenth century, displays a northern naturalism favourable to the striking representation of jewel forms, and serves to illustrate the close and active relationship then existing between the Flemish and Italian goldsmiths.[121]
A fifteenth-century jeweller. From Ortus Sanitatis (Strasburg, about 1497).