"The yerely sūme of ffiue pounds p'cell of the said yerely rents to be bestowed in wheaten bread, to be made into penny loaves, and upon eu'y Lord's day, called Sonday, throughout eu'y yere of the said terme [40 years or thereabouts], fowre and twenty loaves of the said bread, wth the inbread allowed by the baker for those twoe dosens of bread, to be timely brought and sett vpon a forme towards the vpp' end of the chancell of the said p'ish church of St. Marie, and ... the same twoe dosens of bread to be giuen and distributed ... to and amongst fowre and twentie poore people ... the p'ish clarke and sexton of the said church, and the beadle of the said p'ish of St. Marie for the time then being, shall alwaies be three wch from time to time shall haue their shares and parts in the said bread. And they, the said clarke, sexton, and bedell, shall alwaies haue the inbread of all the bread aforesaid ovr and besides their shares in the said twoe dosens of bread from time to time——"
And William Fiske, of Pakenham, Gent., by will, dated March 20, 1648, provided twelvepence a week to pay weekly for one dozen of bread which his mind was, should "be weekly given vnto twelue or thirteene" persons therein referred to.
J. B. COLMAN.
Eye, June 16. 1851.
MOSAIC.
(Vol. iii., p. 389.)
Among the various kinds of picturesque representation, practised by the Greeks and Romans, and transmitted by them to after times, is that of Mosaic, a mode of execution which, in its durability of form, and permanency of colour, possesses distinguished advantages, being unaffected by heat or cold, drought or moisture, and perishing only with the building to which it has been originally attached. This art has been known in Rome since the days of the Republic. The severer rulers of that period forbade the introduction of foreign marbles, and the republican mosaics are all in black and white. Under the Empire the art was greatly improved, and not merely by the introduction of marbles of various colours, but by the invention of artificial stones, termed by the Italians Smalti, which can be made of every variety of tint. This art was never entirely lost. On the introduction of pictures into Christian temples, they were first made of mosaic: remaining specimens of them are rude, but profoundly interesting in an historical point of view. When art was restored in Italy, mosaic also was improved; but it attained its greatest perfection in the last and present century. Roman mosaic, as now practised, may be described as being the production of pictures by connecting together numerous minute pieces of coloured marble or artificial stones. These are attached to a ground of copper, by means of a strong cement of gum mastic, and other materials, and are afterwards ground and polished, as a stone would be, to a perfectly level surface. By this art not only are ornaments made on a small scale, but pictures of the largest size are copied. The most remarkable modern works are the copies which have been executed of some of the most important works of the great masters, for the altars in St. Peter's. These are, in every respect, perfect imitations of the originals; and when the originals, in spite of every care, must change and perish, these mosaics will still convey to distant ages a perfect idea of the triumphs of art achieved in the fifteenth century. Twenty years were employed in making one of the copies I have mentioned. The pieces of mosaic vary in size from an eighth to a sixteenth of an inch, and eleven men were employed for that time on each picture. A great improvement was introduced into the art in 1775, by Signor Raffaeli, who thought of preparing the smalti in what may be termed fine threads. The pastes or smalti are manufactured at Venice, in the shape of crayons, or like sticks of sealing-wax, and are afterwards drawn out by the workman, by a blowpipe, into the thickness he requires, often almost to an hair, and are seldom thicker than the finest grass stalk. For tables, and large articles, of course, the pieces are thicker; but the beauty of the workmanship, the soft gradation of the tints, and the cost, depend upon the minuteness of the pieces, and the skill displayed by the artist. A ruin, a group of flowers or figures, will employ a good artist about two months, when only two inches square; and a specimen of such a description costs from 5l. to 20l., according to the execution: a landscape, six inches by four, would require eighteen months, and would cost from 40l. to 50l. For a picture of Pæstum, eight feet long by twenty inches broad, on which four men were occupied for three years, 1000l. sterling was asked. The mosaic work of Florence differs entirely from Roman mosaic, being composed of stones inserted in comparatively large masses. It is called work in pietra dura; the stones used are all of a more or less precious nature. In old specimens, the most beautiful works are those in which the designs are of an arabesque character. The most remarkable specimen of this description of pietra dura, is an octagonal table, in the Gubinetto di Baroccio, in the Florence Gallery. It is valued at 20,000l. sterling, and was commenced in 1623 by Jacopo Detelli, from designs by Ligozzi. Twenty-two artists worked upon it without interruption till it was terminated, in the year 1649.
One principal distinction between the ancient and modern mosaic is, I believe, that the former was arranged in patterns, the latter coloured in shades. I shall not take up your columns by dwelling on the ancient mosaic, which, as all know was in use among the Orientals, especially the Persians and Assyrians; and from the Easterns the Greeks received the art. In the Book of Esther, i. 6., we have an allusion to a mosaic pavement; and Schleusner understands the Λιθόστρωτον of St. John, xix. 13., to mean a sort of elevated mosaic pavement. Andrea Tafi, towards the close of the thirteenth century, is said to have revived this art in Italy, having learned it from a Greek named Apollonius, who worked at the church of St. Mark at Venice, and to have been the founder of the modern mosaic.
Now for the derivation. The Lithostrata, or tesselated pavements of the Romans, being worked in a regular and mechanical manner, were called opus musivum, opera qua ad amussim facta sunt. Hence the Italian musaico, from whence is derived our appellation of mosaic; but, like most of our arts, through the channel of the French mosaïque. (Vide Pitisci Lexicon, ii. 242.; Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de Medici; Winkelman; Pompeiana, by Gell; Smith's Greek and Roman Antiq.; Beckman's Inventions; and Récherches sur la Peinture en Mosaïque chez les Anciens, &c., annexed to his Description d'un Pavé en Mosaïque, &c.: Paris, 1802.)
GERONIMO.