This work consisted of a mixed style, inasmuch as the material forming the ground of the work is copper; and, moreover, the principal effects are due not less to the skill of the enameller than to the talent of the worker in metal. The process of fabrication is very simple—that is, in the way of description—yet the execution must have been extremely protracted and minute.
“After having prepared and polished a plate of copper,” says M. Labarte, whose account we transfer to our own pages, “the artist marked on it all the parts which were to rise to the surface of the metal, in order to produce the outlines of the drawing or of the figure he wanted to represent; then, with gravers and scrapers, he dug deeply in the copper all the space which the various metals were to cover. In the hollows thus champlevés (a word sometimes used to signify the mode of producing this kind of work), he placed the material to be vitrified, which was afterwards melted in a furnace. When the enamelled piece was cold, he polished it by various means, so as to bring to the surface of the enamel all the lines of the drawing produced by the copper. Gilding was afterwards applied to the parts
Fig. 95.—Cross of an Altar, ascribed to St. Eloi.
of the metal thus preserved. Until the twelfth century, only the outlines of the drawing ordinarily rose to the surface of the enamel, and the tints of the flesh, as well as the dresses, were produced by coloured enamel; in the thirteenth century enamel was no longer used but to colour the ground-work. The figures were entirely preserved on the plate of copper, and the outlines of the drawing were then shown by a delicate engraving on the metal.”
Fig. 96.—An Abbot’s Enamelled Crozier, made at Limoges. (Thirteenth Century.)
Fig. 97.—A Bishop’s Crozier, which appears to be of Italian manufacture. (Fourteenth Century. Cathedral of Metz.)
Between the enamels partitioned (cloisonnés) and the enamels champlevés the difference, as we can see, is only the first arrangement of the divisions to receive the several vitrifiable compositions. Making allowances for the influence of fashion, these two styles of analogous works were held in almost equal estimation. Nevertheless, it seems that the preference ought to be assigned to the goldsmith’s art in Limoges, which, at a time when there was manifested a demand for private reliquaries and collective offerings to the churches, had this advantage over the other, that it was much less costly, and consequently more accessible to all classes ([Fig. 96]). In the present day there is scarcely a museum, or even a private collection, that does not contain some specimen of the ancient Limousine[15] industry.
With the fourteenth century the splendour of the goldsmith’s art ceases to display, as its exclusive object, ecclesiastical decoration and embellishment; but it suddenly became so developed among the laity that King John (of France) desiring, or pretending to desire, to restore it to the exclusive line it had till then retained, prohibited by an ordinance, in 1356, the goldsmiths from “working (fabricating) gold or silver plate, vases, or silver jewellery, of more than one mark of gold or silver, excepting for the churches.”