The people of Saintes now found that their madman, instead of bringing obloquy upon their town, was to bring it fame. The Reformation had made many Protestants in that part of France, and Palissy was one of them. But when the Parliament of Bordeaux, in 1562, ordered the execution of the edict of 1559, that had been directed against the Protestants, the Catholic Duke of Montpensier gave him a special safeguard, and ordered that his porcelain factory should be exempted from the general proscription. Party feeling ran very high, however, and in spite of the Duke’s safeguard Palissy was arrested, his workshop ordered destroyed by the judges at Saintes, and the King himself had to send a special messenger to the town and claim that Palissy was his own servant, in order to save his life. The royal family, in spite of their many faults, were sincere lovers of beautiful workmanship, and they summoned Palissy to Paris, where they could insure his safety. Catherine de’ Medici gave him a site for his workshop on a part of the ground where the Palace of the Tuilleries stood later, and used often to visit him and talk with him about his art. He made the finest pieces of his porcelain here in Paris. Here he also resumed his earlier studies, and came to lecture on natural history and physics to all the great scholars of the day. When the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve deluged France with the blood of Protestants Catherine saw that Palissy was spared from the general destruction.
Palissy had shown the inborn courage of his nature during those sixteen lean years in Saintes. The perilous ups and downs of life in sixteenth century France were to show that courage in another light. In spite of royal favor the Catholic League reached for him, and in 1588, when he was nearly eighty years old, he was arrested by order of the Sixteen, thrown into the Bastille, and threatened with death. Henry III, son of Catherine, and in his own way a friend of artists, went to see Palissy in prison. “My good friend,” said the King, “you have now been five and forty years in the service of my mother and myself; we have allowed you to retain your religion in the midst of fire and slaughter. Now I am so pressed by the Guises and my own people that I am constrained to deliver you up into the hands of your enemies, and to-morrow you will be burned unless you are converted.”
“Sire,” answered the old man, “I am ready to resign my life for the glory of God. You have told me several times that you pity me, and I, in my turn, pity you, who have used the words I am constrained. It was not spoken like a king, sire; and these are words which neither you nor those who constrain you, the Guisards and all your people, will ever be able to make me utter, for I know how to die.”
The King, however, admiring Palissy’s talents, and remembering his mother’s fondness for the artist, would not give him up to the party of the League. Instead he let him remain in his dungeon in the Bastille, where he died in 1589.
The maker of Palissy ware, as it is called, had many talents, and among them was that of the writer. During his days in prison he busied himself in penning his philosophic, religious, and artistic meditations, as many other illustrious prisoners have done. His autobiography is curious, and its note of sincerity has given it great value as a human document. Says Lamartine of the writings of Palissy, they are “real treasures of human wisdom, divine piety, and eminent genius, as well as of great simplicity, vigor, and copiousness of style. It is impossible, after reading them, not to consider the poor potter one of the greatest writers of the French language. Montaigne is not more free and flowing, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is scarcely more graphic; neither does Bossuet excel him in poetical power.”
But Palissy did not explain his art of enamel in detail in any of his writings, and after the death of his brothers or nephews, who succeeded to his work, the secret of Palissy ware, like that of certain other arts of the Renaissance, was lost.
Palissy did not decorate his porcelain with flat painting. His figures, which usually dealt with historical, mythological, or allegorical subjects, were executed in relief, and colored. These colors were bright, and were generally yellows, blues, and grays, although sometimes he used greens, violets, and browns. He never acquired the pure white enamel of Luca della Robbia, nor that of the faience of Nevers. His enamel is hard, but the glaze is not so fine as that of Delft. The back of his ware is never all the same color, but usually mottled with several colors, often yellow, blue, and brown.
Palissy’s studies in natural history helped him when he came to decorate his pottery. The figures are strikingly true in form and color, and seem to have been moulded directly from nature, as they probably were. Thus the fossil shells which he frequently used in his border decorations are the shells found in the Paris basin, his fish are those of the Seine, his plants, usually the watercress, the hart’s tongue, and the maidenhair fern, are those which he found in the country about Paris. His rustic scenes have that same charm of fidelity to nature.
He also made very beautiful tiles to overlay walls, stoves, and floors. The château at Ecouen has a large room entirely paved with them, and many are to be seen in the chapel. They bear heraldic designs, the devices of the Constable de Montmorenci, and the colors are fresh and bright, due to the artist’s unique method of enameling.
Like so many Renaissance artists Palissy tried his skill in many lines. If his most remarkable work was his “rustic pieces,” as they are called, great dishes ornamented with fishes, reptiles, frogs, shells, and plants in relief, intended to be used as ornaments and not for service, scarcely less interesting were his statuettes, his stands for fountains, his “rustic figures” for gardens, his candlesticks, ewers and basins, saltcellars, ink-stands, and baskets. Large collections of his work are to be found in the Louvre, the Hôtel de Cluny, and at Sèvres. Many pieces have strayed into the hands of great private collectors of rare porcelain, and both England and Russia have many fine examples of his masterpieces.