FRONT OF A COFFER, NO. 7830—1861 (VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).
Finally, in my last example (No. 7830—1861), the panel of a coffer belonging to the early sixteenth century, we see another use and treatment of gesso—to soften and enrich the effect of woodcarving and to make a good surface for gilding. The figures here are carved in bold relief and overlaid with a coating of gesso.
All carved work to be gilded was treated in this way with gesso, which greatly softens the effect, giving a smooth surface for the gilding and increases its richness, especially when done over Armenian bole, which we may see was used under the gilding of these raised gesso ornaments generally—another method which is being revived with the general revival of the forgotten arts of design and handicraft in our own time.
Note.—With reference to the early use of gesso, the extremely interesting and remarkable recent discoveries of Prof. Flinders Petrie in Egypt in the shape of mummies of the Roman period of the first century A.D., in addition to the light they throw on antique portrait painting, show that gilded gesso enrichment over linen was freely used at that period, some of the masks being moulded, and the ornament apparently stamped, the toes of each mummy being modelled and gilded and burnished, and the wrappings relieved with gilded buttons of gesso.
[9:] Before the appointment of Sir Cecil Smith.
[10:] Cennino describes a method of cutting stamps in stone (Chapter 170) to be used as moulds for figures to be applied to the decoration of chests or coffers, but he speaks of beating tin into these moulds and forming the figures in this way, afterwards backing them or filling them in with gesso grosso, cutting them out and sticking them on the chest with glue, gilding them and adding colour and varnish.
NOTES ON THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS IN ART
NOTES ON THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS IN ART
LOOKING back over the vast field of historic art it is obvious that the representation of animals has occupied a very important position—even the prehistoric cave-men display their artistic instinct in animal draughtsmanship, and in that alone, and their naturalistic scratched and incised outlines have set down for us in unerring characterization, the forms of the mastodon, reindeer, and other animals of the primitive hunter.