The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

generally considered the most skilful goldsmith of his time ([Figs. 101] and [102]). However that may be, the style of the goldsmith’s art of the fifteenth century continued, as in the two or three preceding centuries, conformable to the contemporaneous style of architecture. For instance, the shrine of Saint-Germain-des-Près, which was of that period, had the form of a small ogivale[16] church; and some specimens still existing in Berlin are of the Gothic character, the prevailing style of the edifices of those times. But an influence was making itself felt that was not long in entirely modifying the general aspect of the productions of the trade we are considering. That transformation must have been promoted by Italy; in the midst of which, in spite of intestine troubles and serious contentions with other nations, a luxury and opulence prevailed. Genoa, Venice, Florence, Rome, had long been so many centres where the Fine Arts struggled for pre-eminence and inspiration. Among the majority of the wealthy merchants who had

Fig. 102.—Escutcheon in Silver-gilt, executed by Corneille de Bonte, in the Fifteenth Century. (Museum of the Hôtel de Ville, Ghent.)

become patricians of those gorgeous republics were found so many Mæcenases, under whose patronage flourished great artists whom popes and princes emulously countenanced. “From the moment,” says M. Labarte, “when the Nicolases, the Jeans of Pisa, and the Giottos, throwing off the Byzantine yoke, caused Art to emerge from languor and supineness, that of the goldsmith could no longer find favour in Italy but by maintaining itself on a level with the progress of sculpture, whose daughter it was.[17] When we know that the great Donatello,—Philip Brunelleschi, the bold architect of the dome of Florence,—Ghiberti, the author of the marvellous doors of the Baptistery, had goldsmiths for their earliest masters, we may judge what artists the Italian goldsmiths of that period must have been.” The first in date is the celebrated Jean of Pisa, son of Nicolas, who, brought from Arezzo in 1286, to sculpture the marble table of the high-altar, and a group of the Virgin between St. Gregory and St. Donato, desired to pay tribute to the taste of the time by ornamenting the altar with those fine chasings on silver coloured with enamels to which we give the name of translucid enamels in relief; and also by designing a clasp or jewel with which he decorated the breast of the Virgin. Both chasings and clasp are now lost.

To Jean (Giovanni) of Pisa succeeded his pupils Agostino and Agnolo of Siena.

In 1316 Andrea of Ognibene executed, for the Cathedral of Pistoia, an altar-front, which has come down to us, and must have been followed by more important works. Then come Pietro and Paulo of Arezzo, Ugolino of Siena, and finally Master Cione,[18] the author of the two silver bas-reliefs still to be seen on the altar of the Baptistery of Florence. Master Cione, whose school was numerous, had for his principal pupils Forzane of Arezzo and Leonardo of Florence, who worked on the two most noted monuments of the goldsmith’s art which time and depredations have respected—the altar of Saint-Jacques at Pistoia, and that same altar of the Baptistery to which the bas-reliefs of Cione were afterwards adapted. During more than a hundred and fifty years the ornamentation of these two altars, of which no description can give an idea, was, if we may so say, the arena wherein all the most famous goldsmiths met.

At the end of the fourteenth century Luca della Robbia, who, as we have seen, distinguished himself in ceramic art, and afterwards Brunelleschi, no less great as an architect than as a sculptor, came forth from the studio of a goldsmith. At the same period shone Baccioforte and Mazzano of Placentia, Arditi the Florentine, and Bartoluccio, master of the famous sculptor Ghiberti, to whom we owe those doors of the Baptistery, which Michael Angelo pronounced worthy of being placed at the entrance to Paradise.

Fig. 103.—Shrine of the Fifteenth Century. (Collection of Prince Soltykoff.)

It is well known that the execution of these doors was, in 1400, submitted to competition; and it may be said, in honour of the goldsmith’s art, that Ghiberti, vying with the most celebrated competitors—for among them were Donatello and Brunelleschi—owed his triumph, perhaps, to the simple fact that he had treated, as it were by habit, his model with all the delicacy of the goldsmith’s art. And it must be added, and to the praise of the great artist, that although in great reputation for sculptured works of the highest importance, he adhered faithfully all his life to his first profession, and considered it not derogatory even to manufacture jewellery. Thus, for example, in 1428 he mounted as a signet for Jean de Medicis, a cornelian said to have belonged to the treasury of Nero, and he set it as a winged-dragon emerging from a cluster of ivy leaves; in 1429, for Pope Martin V., a button of the cope, and a mitre; and in 1439, for Pope Eugene IV., a golden mitre, embellished with five and a half pounds weight of precious stones,—its front representing Christ surrounded by numerous cherubs, and at the back the Virgin in the midst of the four Evangelists.