MARRIAGE COFFER, NO. 5804—1859 (VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).
As an adjunct to painting gilded gesso was frequently used burnished and enriched with stamped or punctured patterns (granare), often in the form of nimbi around the heads of saints and angels in devotional works, and in backgrounds. Cennino (Chapter 142) speaks of this method and gives directions in it. The Marriage Coffer from the Museum, No. 5804—1859, illustrates this treatment and is a good example of its highly decorative effect. The front panel shows a very rich and interesting design of figures in fifteenth century Florentine costume, heightened with gilded
parts in gesso having small punctured patterns upon it, which give sparkle and variety to the gold. This method seems to have been continued for several centuries in Florence. I have an alms-dish of early seventeenth century date, the centre of which is treated in this way with punctured or hollow pin-head patterns impressed upon a gilded gesso ground.
This method, it may be noted, has lately been revived by Mrs. Adrian Stokes in association with tempera painting.
ITALIAN CASSONE, NO. 317—1894 (VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).
Stamped work, again, mentioned by Cennino, is another distinct method in gesso decoration. Of this a very beautiful example is the early fourteenth-century Italian cassone (No. 317—1894). This cassone is decorated with figures of knights and ladies on horseback, in hawking and hunting array, each figure being silhouetted in clear profile in a separate square panel, in white, upon a black or a red ground, alternately. These spaces or panels are divided horizontally by bands of running ornament in relief, and, vertically by bands of thin wrought iron foliated at the edges which form protecting and strengthening bands for the chest. The stamps from which these figures were produced must have been most delicately cut. They are full of fine detail and charming in design. It is not quite clear how they could have been so cleanly stamped upon the ground, unless perhaps, the edges and outlines were carefully gone round
and cleared afterwards, or the paste in which they were stamped, perhaps being slow in setting and more or less elastic, might have allowed of their being stamped cleanly out of the material separately and applied to the gesso ground or the chest afterwards.[10]
In design these figures (on the cassone illustrated) are characterized by a certain graceful severity, almost Greek-like in its ornamental restraint, yet in the delicate invention and richness of the decorative details of the costumes and housings of the horses they are oriental in treatment.
It has often been said that human figures cannot be repeated with satisfactory decorative effect, but this cassone is surely a striking instance to the contrary, as the recurring effect of these delicately silhouetted and slightly formalized figures and horses is extremely refined and beautiful.