Fig. 98.—Portable Altar; German,
Thirteenth Century.
(S.K.M.)
When Justinian rebuilt Sta. Sophia he placed in it a ciborium or tabernacle of great splendour. Ciboria are now changed into what are known as baldacchinos.
In the Kensington and British Museums are many examples of Champlevé enamels, both German and Limoges, such as book-covers, croziers, pricket candlesticks, châsses, chefs, reliquaries, paxes, crosses, and nuptial caskets, &c. Most of them have blue grounds, with light bluish-grey and dark blue or green ornaments, and are usually enamelled on copper. Some of the reliquaries or châsses have gilt figures in high relief. From the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries is the date of these enamels.
In the latter end of the thirteenth and in the fourteenth centuries enamels became simplified in execution; the figures were mostly incised and gilt, and the background a level coating of enamel—generally of a blue colour. (Fig. 100.)
Fig. 99 is a Limoges enamelled châsse or shrine of the twelfth century, and is in the British Museum.
The Italians did not make Champlevé enamels; but they worked in the Cloisonné process from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, as we know from examples, and from the work, “Diversarum Artium Schedula,” written by the learned monk Theophilus, in the twelfth century, wherein he describes very minutely the whole process of making Cloisonné enamels, according to the methods of the Tuscan enamellers of his time.
Fig. 99.—Châsse in Champlevé Enamel; Twelfth Century. (B.M.)
As regards the antiquity of the art of enamelling on metal, it is generally agreed by learned authorities in the matter that before the art was known at Constantinople or in the workshops of Greece, it was practised by the “barbarians” of Western Europe in the Gallo-Roman period. We apologize for quoting here the oft-repeated passage from Philostratus, the Greek who established himself at Rome in the early part of the third century at the request of the Empress Julia, wife of Septimus Severus. In his “Treatise upon Images” he says: “It is said that the barbarians living near the ocean pour colours upon heated brass, so that these adhere and become like stone, and preserve the design represented.”