Fig. 239.—Carved Wood Panel; French; Sixteenth Century. (P.)
When the Renaissance had taken a firm root in Germany, the designers and carvers of altar-pieces and of furniture generally proved themselves thorough masters of the style, and were especially skilful in the carving of wood, both on a gigantic and on a minute scale. Whole fronts of houses were elaborately carved in designs consisting of figure work, animals, ornament, and grotesques of a quaint and humorous description, while exceedingly minute works of figure subjects and animals were carved in box and other woods with a delicacy and quaintness often excelling the ivory carvings of the Japanese. Escritoires, buffets, cabinets, and other furniture, were made and exported from Germany into Spain and other countries.
Flemish and English furniture and carving were pretty much alike in the reigns of Elizabeth—the Tudor period of English art—and of James I., the Stuart or Jacobean. The pieces of carved furniture, both Flemish and English, were very solid and heavy both in the design and thickness of the material, which was generally of oak or chestnut. So much Flemish furniture was imported into England at this time, and the English-made work, being so close in resemblance to the former, that a great difficulty is experienced in classifying examples of this period. The table, Fig. 240, and the so-called “Great Bed of Ware,” are examples of the furniture of the Elizabethan period (Fig. 241.)
Fig. 240.—Elizabethan Table. (P.)
In Spain the Italian style in furniture was introduced in the first instance by the great importations from Italy and Germany, but under such excellent native carvers and designers as Felipe de Borgoña (sixteenth century), and Berruguete (1480-1561), the style of the Renaissance soon spread from Toledo to Seville and Valladolid, where great quantities of carved and inlaid work and elaborate altar-pieces were executed during the prosperous Spanish period of the sixteenth century.
Fig. 241.—The Great Bed of Ware; Elizabethan. (P.)
During the same century Venice and Florence were famed for their marquetry—inlaid work of ivory and metal—in cypress, walnut, and other woods, which art had been imported from Persia and India by the Venetians, and which spread rapidly through Europe until the furniture made with marquetry decoration by degrees supplanted the heavier classical architectural designs.