A detailed and exhaustive description of this chalice is given in Miss Stokes’s “Early Christian Art in Ireland,” from which our illustration is taken.
Going back to the ninth century, we have the ring of King Ethelwulf, bearing his name, which is of Saxon workmanship. It was found in Hampshire, and is made of gold and blue-black enamel. Another ring, that of Alfred the Great, was found at Athelney in Somersetshire, the place where Alfred retired to in 878. It is of gold, wrought in filigree and chased. The face is of rock crystal, and the design is in filigree fastened to the gold plate and enamelled in the Byzantine manner. Round the edge is the inscription (translated), “Alfred ordered me to be made.”
Enamelled disks, fibulæ, finger rings, and other articles of personal adornment have been found in England of the Anglo-Saxon period, mostly having a bronze foundation for the enamel.
Documents are preserved at Oxford proving that Limoges enamellers were brought over to England in the thirteenth century to execute effigies, tombs, and other work in enamels. Master John, a native of Limoges, was employed to construct the tomb and recumbent figure of Walter de Merton, Bishop of Rochester. This work was destroyed at the period of the Reformation. There still exists, however, some of the Limoges work of that date in the effigy of William de Valence, who died in 1129. This tomb is in Westminster Abbey.
The enamels known as émaux de plique à jour, are a kind of Cloisonné work in which there was no background, the enamel being in variety transparent, in imitation of precious stones, and set between the Cloisons or network of gold. The beautiful specimen (Fig. 103) is a cup with a cover, and with architectural features; it is now in South Kensington Museum.
Translucent enamels upon relief date from the period when Art in Italy was beginning to throw off the stiffness and angularity of Byzantine traditions. This was towards the end of the thirteenth century, in the early dawn of the Renaissance.
Freedom in sculpture and painting brought with it a desire to treat enamels in the same freedom, and so we find that engraving on silver and gold, and placing carefully the various powdered enamels in their proper proportions over the engraved surfaces, produced an entirely new and splendid effect; besides, it required more artistic skill to execute this kind of enamelling, and consequently the best artists of the Renaissance were not only goldsmiths, painters, sculptors, and architects, but executed important works in enamels as well. The method was one that could be described as a link between the art of the painter and the goldsmith, and no doubt the demand for enamelled altars, and religious vessels of all kinds, both sacred and secular, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was the cause of producing many artists that subsequently rose to great eminence. For instance, among others may be mentioned Francisco Francia, the celebrated painter who lived in the fifteenth century, who was originally a goldsmith, and as Vasari says, he excelled everybody of his time as an engraver on metals and as an enameller on silver. There is a fine oil-painting by him in the National Gallery of London, on which he has signed himself as “Francia the Goldsmith.” Many names of eminent Italians artists might be given who executed works in enamel in the translucent process: Nicolas Pisano and John his pupil, who executed an altar for Bishop Gubertini of Arezzo in translucent enamel on silver in 1286. Agostino and Agnolo were pupils of John, and helped him at this altar.
Fig. 103.—Cup of Translucent Enamel. (S.K.M.)
Forzore, the son of Spinello of Arezzo, is mentioned by Vasari as a famous enameller. Pollaiuolo is another great name in the Italian art of the goldsmith and enameller. He was also a celebrated modeller and sculptor who had helped Ghiberti in the ornamental work of his gates of the Baptistery of St. John. He died in 1498. Many other celebrated names could be mentioned, but the greatest of all, both as a goldsmith and as an enameller, was Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1570), whose work is well known, and who tells us himself, in his “Treatise on the Goldsmith’s Art,” so much about the method of enamelling in his time. The celebrated ewer, called “The Cellini Ewer,” is a masterpiece of jeweller’s work, and is attributed to Cellini. The body of the ewer is composed of two oval slices of brown sardonyx, carved with radiating ribs in relief. These slices are fastened in an ornamental frame of gold, richly worked. A female figure sits on the top front curve of the body under the lip. The neck, lip, stem with dragons, and other parts of the framework, are enamelled in the translucent method.