50. NEEDLE POINT WORK, SWISS.
The use of the point went further than rendering the texture of hair, and so on. It was used for the rendering of all texture and the completion of modelling everywhere. The Swiss glass painter did very much what is done in large when one draws on brown or grey paper in white and black; only instead of black chalk he used brown paint, and instead of putting on white chalk he scraped away a half tint with which he had begun by coating the glass; and of course he worked in small.
One knows by experience how much more telling the white crayon is than the black, how much more modelling you seem to get with very little drawing; and so it is in glass; and so it was that the glass painter depended so much more upon taking out lights than upon putting in darks. The difference between the Swiss manner and the process already described in reference to Renaissance church glass was mainly that, working upon so much smaller a scale, the artist depended so much more upon the point. His work is, in fact, a kind of etching. It is the exact reverse of drawing in pen and ink, where the draughtsman works line by line up to his darkest shadow. Here he works line by line to clearest light, precisely as the etcher draws his negative upon copper, only on glass it is the positive picture which is produced. So far as manipulation is concerned the two processes are identical. It is indeed quite within the bounds of possibility that the method of the glass painter (and not that of the damascener, as generally supposed) may first have put the etcher upon the track of his technique.
The method of workmanship employed by the painter is shown pretty clearly on [page 90]. In spite of a certain granular surface given by the stone employed by the lithographer in reproducing the design, it is quite clearly seen how the man’s armour and the texture of the silk in his sleeves is all obtained by the point. The trace of the needle is not clearly shown in the flesh, except in the hand upon his hip; but on [page 93] it is everywhere apparent—in the shading of the architecture, at the top of the page, in the damascening of the tops of shields below, in the drawing of the pastoral staff, in the modelling of the mitre and the representation of the jewels upon it, no less than in the rendering of the texture of the silk.
This ultra-delicacy of workmanship was naturally carried to its furthest extent upon white glass or upon white and stain, but the same method was employed with pot-metal colour; and, during the early part of the sixteenth century at least, pot-metal colour was used when it conveniently could be, and the leading was sometimes cleverly schemed, though the glass employed was often crude in colour. Eventually, in Switzerland as everywhere, enamel colour succeeded pot-metal, by which, of course, it would have been impossible correctly to render the tinctures of elaborately quartered shields on the minute scale to which they were customarily drawn. At Lucerne, for example, there are some small circular medallions with coats of arms not much bigger than occur on the back of an old-fashioned watchcase. Needless to say that there the drawing is done entirely with a point. This kind of thing is, of course, glass painting in miniature; it is not meant to say that it is effective; but it is none the less marvellously done. It was at its best, roughly speaking, from 1530 to a little later than 1600. Some of the very best that was ever done, now at the Rath-haus at Lucerne, bears date from 1606-1609; there is some also at the Hof-kirche there; but that is out of the reach of ordinary sight, and this is placed where it can conveniently be studied. The point-work, it should be understood, is still always scraped out of brown, or it may be black. The enamel that may be used with it is floated on independently of this; and as time went on enamel was of course very largely used, especially in the seventeenth century. To the credit of the Swiss it should be said that, alone among later glass painters, they were at once conscientious and expert in the chemistry of their art, and used enamel which has been proof against time. They knew their trade, and practised it devotedly. Possibly it was the small scale upon which they worked which enabled them to fuse the enamel thoroughly with the glass. It is due to them also to say that, though their style may have been finikin, there was nothing feeble about their workmanship; that was masterly. And they remain the masters of delicate manipulation and finish in glass painting.
Although the needle point was used to most effective purpose in Swiss glass it did not of course entirely supersede other methods. At the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg (where there is a fair amount of good work, 1502-1672) there is some matted tint which is shaded and then lined in brown, much after the manner of one of Dürer’s woodcuts. It has very much the appearance of a pen drawing shaded, as many of the old masters’ drawings were, in brown wash.