No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
The minor arts of the Renaissance in Italy included the ornamentation of small wooden boxes with reliefs moulded in a plastic material which was applied while yielding and hardened subsequently to the firmness of a soft stone. Although persons of a romantic turn of mind like to call such boxes ‘jewel-caskets’, it would seem more probable that they were made for the use of persons of moderate means, as substitutes for the caskets of precious materials such as were used by the rich, to contain trinkets and small oddments rather than gems or jewellery. In the fourteenth century and during a great part of the fifteenth the pastiglia covered the whole, or almost the whole, of the outer surface of its wooden foundation, was in most cases modelled smoothly in gentle gradations of relief, and was painted with colours which accentuated the forms of its comparatively large figures and supplied details of the decoration. In the second half of the fifteenth century, and continuing into the sixteenth, the decoration, in both its figures and its conventionalized ornament, was on a much smaller scale and in much sharper relief, and was applied to a level surface which might itself be a kind of pastiglia, either plain or marked all over with a regular repeated pattern.
page 123 note 1 The earliest example, of a small box adorned with applied relief-ornament, which I recall is one in the Cologne Kunstgewerbe Museum, reproduced in Kohlhaussen's, H.Minnekästchen im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1928, no. 8Google Scholar; its ornament consists of conventionalized foliage and looks to be of about the middle of the thirteenth century, to which period and to the region of the lower Rhine the casket is attributed.
page 123 note 2 An exception to this is a casket, about 60 cm. long, attributed to the end of the fourteenth century, formerly in the Spitzer Collection (cf. La Collection Spitzer, v, Paris, 1892Google Scholar, section on ‘Coffrets’, pl. 1; Sale Cat., Paris, 1893, no. 2982Google Scholar), ornamented with figures of mounted knights and of other personages, in almost full relief, formed of pâte painted and gilt.
page 123 note 3 Molinier devotes to them a somewhat disparaging paragraph, speaking of them as products of artisans rather than of artists, in the Histoire générale des arts appliqués à l'industrie, ii, 64.
page 123 note 4 Cf. von Schlosser, J., ‘Die Werkstatt der Embriachi in Venedig’, in the Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Kaiserhauses, Vienna, xx (1899), 220 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 124 note 1 Cf. Hildburgh, W. L., ‘Italian Wafering-Irons of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Proc. Soc. Antiquaries, 2nd ser., xxvii (1915), 161 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 124 note 1 In Metropolitan Museum Studies, iv (1932-1933), 55–75Google Scholar, is a paper, by T. O. Mabbott, on ‘Pasteprints and Sealprints’, concerned with prints in low-relief in plastic materials. The things dealt with in this seem, however, not to have been associated in any way with the production of the pastiglia ornamented caskets.
page 124 note 3 Cf. Schottmüller, F., Wohnungskultur und Möbel der italienischen Renaissance, Stuttgart, 1928, fig. 87Google Scholar.
page 124 note 4 Ibid., fig. 88.
page 124 note 5 Ibid., fig. 85.
page 124 note 6 Ibid., fig. 104.
page 124 note 7 Ibid., figs. 82, 83, 84.
page 124 note 8 Cf. Weinberger, M., The George Grey Barnard Collection, New York (Robinson Galleries), 1941, no. 168Google Scholar, with pl. XLVII. W. Bode, in an introductory note to the Catalogue of the Grassi Collection (in which the casket was before entering Mr. Barnard's), suggested that its ornamentation, ‘very characteristic of Sienese art’, may have been ‘inspired by similar motives in Northern tapestries’. cf. Weinberger, loc. cit.
page 125 note 1 Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. J. G. Mann, Keeper of the Wallace Collection.
page 125 note 2 Cf. Weinberger, op. cit., pl. XLIX, no. 173.
page 125 note 3 Photographs of both reproduced in the Sale Cat. No. 2983 is represented in the large catalogue only by a small line-engraving; no. 2984 is represented in that catalogue by two large photographs, of the front and of the top of the lid.
page 125 note 4 Reproduced on a small scale by Schottmüller, op. cit., fig. 157.
page 125 note 5 Cf. Mensing's (F. Muller & Cie.’.) illustrated catalogue of the Castiglioni Sale at Amsterdam, 13–15 July 1926, no. 350 (with photographic reproduction).
page 125 note 6 Cf. Weinberger, nos. 171, 172.
page 125 note 7 Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Harris. The incidents here depicted are on the back, being ‘The Transformation of Daphne’ and ‘Orpheus Playing to the Beasts’. on the front are ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ and ‘The Judgment of Paris’. A similarly small casket, with mythological scenes including impressions from some of the matrices used for the casket of pl. xix b, in the Spitzer Collection and now in the Louvre Museum, is reproduced (in a line-drawing) as no. 6 of ‘Coffrets’ and by Molinier, , op. cit., p. 82Google Scholar; it is not illustrated in the Sale Cat.
page 125 note 8 No. 2984 of the Sale Cat.; no. 4, of ‘Coffrets’, in the large catalogue.
page 126 note 1 Weinberger has already pointed out that the decoration of the lid of no. 173 ‘proves its origin from the same workshop as Nos. 171 and 172’.
page 126 note 2 Cf. his section, on ‘Möbel und Holzarbeiten’, in Lehnert's, G.Geschichte des Kunstgetverbes, i, Berlin, 1907, p. 446.Google Scholar He remarks that although caskets of the kind are very often presumed to be of Florentine origin, their style indicates that more probably they are of Venetian.
page 126 note 3 Cf. von Falke, O., in Sale Cat. Figdor Collection, Part I, v, no. 338 with pl. CXXXVIIGoogle Scholar.
page 126 note 4 Dr. Plenderleith conducted some experiments with pastes made from white lead mixed with the separable parts of a hen's egg. He found that a mixture including the white alone was useless; one with the yolk alone somewhat better; but one including both yolk and white considerably the most satisfactory.
page 126 note 5 Cf. Thompson, Daniel V. Jr., The Materials of Medieval Painting, London, 1936, pp. 50 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 127 note 1 Cf. Maclehose, L. S., Vasari on Technique, London, 1907, pp. 170 fGoogle Scholar.
page 127 note 2 In view of the lapse of time involved, Vasari's statement, for which he does not give his authority, must be accepted with reserve.
page 127 note 3 A number of editions of this, as well as translations in several languages, have been printed. An excellent recent edition is that of Thompson, D. V. Jr., the Italian text in Il libro dell’ arte and an annotated translation in The Craftsman's Handbook, New Haven (Yale University Press), 1932-1933Google Scholar.
page 127 note 4 Cf. Weinberger, , op. cit., pls. XLVIIIGoogle Scholar (giving good views of right end, back, and left end, of no. 171) and XLIX (back of no. 172). No. 173 (on pl. XLIX), which is ornamented with leafy scrolls and rosettes instead of with Roman scenes, is referred, because of the decoration of its lid, to the same workshop.
page 127 note 1 The floor whereon the figures are represented to be standing was formed in sections comparatively large, supplementary details being shaped in their own matrices and laid on as desired. The columns between the scenes, and the ornamental borders beneath and over them, similarly were made in sections.
page 127 note 2 The nature of the plastic material, and the way in which the impressions were applied, make full certainty in the matter somewhat difficult. I believe that it might have been feasible to make matrices of almost equal delicacy in a fine-grained hardwood such as was used for printing-blocks; but I doubt that in wood such delicacy could have survived for long the treatment to which the matrices must have been exposed. Furthermore, in spite of the distortions caused by the viscidity of the pastiglia and by the conditions under which it hardened, the quality of the incisions appears to me such as would be produced in metal rather than in wood; some of the cutting, indeed, looks as if done with rotating tools, reminding us that Vasari tells us, in his description of contemporary methods of cutting steel dies for medals (’Introduction’, §70), that ‘Many artificers have been in the habit however of carving the matrices with wheels, just as intaglio work is done in crystals, jaspers,… and other oriental stones; and the work done in this way makes the matrices more sharp’ (cf. Maclehose, op. cit. 167). Even if metal matrices served, as I surmise, for shaping the figures of the scenes, wooden ones still might have served for the borders and some other ornamental details, which were on a larger scale.
page 127 note 3 It is perhaps not without significance that Arezzo, the ancient Arretium, lay in Tuscany, centrally situated and in close touch with the art-movements of the day, since at Arretium there had been made, just before and in the opening years of the Christian era, a type of pottery—the famous Arretine ware—based on an application of that latter principle (for an exhaustive account of that ware, see Alexander, Christine, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Metropolitan Museum of Art fascicule 1 [U.S.A. fascicule 9]Google Scholar, Arretine Relief Ware, Cambridge [Mass.], 1943).Google Scholar The bowls of Arretine ware, ornamented outside with scenes in relief, were spun on the wheel into moulds, made of baked clay, whose interiors bore in intaglio the scenes which were to appear on the completed bowls; and those intaglios had been produced by impressing the clay of the moulds, while plastic, with a number of stamps, each covering a single detail of the scene, which could be combined according to the inclination of the mould-maker. The manner of making the Arretine moulds must have been obvious to craftsmen of the Italian Renaissance, wherefore it would seem by no means improbable that the revival of the interest in Roman antiquity which inspired the depiction of Roman scenes in pastiglia may also have inspired the craftsman who produced those scenes to adopt for their production a Roman technique modified to suit the conditions of his task.
page 129 note 1 Hill, G. F., Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, London, 1930Google Scholar.
page 130 note 1 For methods and tools employed in preparing grounds of this kind, see Thompson, The Craftsman's Handbook and The Materials of Medieval Painting.
page 130 note 2 Cf. , Hildburgh, op. cit. 171 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 131 note 1 Ibid., pp. 167 f., 165.
page 131 note 2 Ibid., pp. 171 ff.
page 131 note 3 It is perhaps worth mentioning, as possibly having some bearing on the question of a relationship between the makers of the Umbrian waferplates and the engravers of the matrices for the minute pastiglia-reliefs, that a ‘cassa … decorata [in pastiglia] con istorie di guerrieri, lavorate in assai belle figure’, belonging to the Congregazione di Carita of Perugia, is recorded as an exhibit, in Labó's, M.La mostra di antica arte umbra a Perugia—1907, Turin, 1907, p. 32Google Scholar.
page 131 note 4 The pair of plates is reproduced on a small scale, and described and related to the plates of other wafering-irons, in my paper on ‘Italian Wafering-irons …’, fig. 6 (nos. 20 a and 20 b) and p. 188. In the British Museum is a pair of irons, closely similar to this pair, with the arms of the Venetian family of Loredano.
page 132 note 1 For some typical examples (of which many more could readily be cited), cf. Bode, W. and Marks, Murray, The Italian Bronze Statuettes of the Renaissance, ii, London, 1908, pls. CXX–CXXXIGoogle Scholar.
page 132 note 2 Cf. ibid., Text, p. 13.
page 133 note 1 There are in the ornamentation of the casket shown in pls. XVIII a, b and XXII, a, b a number of restorations clearly distinguishable, by the quality of their reliefs, from the original portions of the ornamentation. The material of some of these appears, under ultra-violet light, to belike that of the original ornamentation, but that of others appears to be different, thus suggesting that the casket has suffered restorations on more than one occasion.
page 135 note 1 Reproduced by Lippmann, F., The Seven Planets, International Chalcographical Society, 1895Google Scholar; Hind, A. M., Early Florentine Engraving, London, 1938, ii, pls. 114, 116, 118–26Google Scholar, with relevant text in i, 77 ff.
page 135 note 2 Cf. Lippmann, , op. cit.Google Scholar; and Hind, , op. cit., pls. 115, 117, 119–28Google Scholar.
page 135 note 3 One difference, resulting from the need to apportion in the engravings twelve signs among seven planets while on the casket each planet could take two signs, is that in the engravings the car of Diana, who represents the Moon, and that of Apollo, who represents the Sun, are two-wheeled, instead of four-wheeled as are all the cars on the casket. There are other differences in the attitudes of the principal figures, in the attributes of those figures and in the fittings of the vehicles, in the natures of some of the creatures pulling the cars (e.g. in the engravings Mercury's resemble hawks rather than the crested birds of the casket), and in the attitudes and the orientations of some of the zodiacal signs.
page 135 note 4 Cf. Lippmann, 4 f.
page 135 note 5 e.g. Jupiter himself is much the same on the casket and in the woodcut, although on the former he holds an arrow in his right hand instead of the long rod-like sceptre in the left hand (as in the earlier Florentine series; in the later, this is replaced by an arrow) shown in the latter. On the casket his throne, with back arched at the top, is of the same type as in the woodcut, but quite different from the thrones in the engravings. Both on the casket and in the woodcut Ganymede holds only a basin, whereas in the engravings he holds a ewer in addition; it should be observed, however, that while on the casket he kneels on both knees, in all the three other cases he is on one only. On the casket and in the woodcut Sagittarius shoots in the direction—the same in both—in which he runs; in the engravings he runs the opposite way and has his body turned so that he may shoot backwards. Th e pair of fishes constituting Pisces have the same arrangement on the casket and in the woodcut, but are arranged in the opposite way in the engravings.
page 136 note 1 Compare, for example, the framings, still in their original situations in Venice, of a number of paintings by Giovanni Bellini; reproductions of many such framings may be seen in G. Gronau's Giovanni Bellini (in the series ‘Klassiker der Kunst’., passim.
page 136 note 2 Good photographs of all these paintings are easily available. The ‘Venus’ section is reproduced in F. Knapp's Perugino (in the series ‘Klassiker der Kunst’., Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1907, fig. 64 (text on p. 88); the ‘Luna’ section in U. Gnoli's Pietro Perugino, Spoleto, 1923, pl. xxviii. Vannucci seems to have been responsible for the designs alone, the actual painting having been done by his pupils; cf. A History of Painting in Italy, by Crowe, J. A. and Cavalcaselle, G. B., v (edited by Borenius, T.), London, 1914, pp. 325 ff., 322Google Scholar.