THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
There are few matters regarding art more worthy of consideration than
the narrowness of the limits that bound human invention: or, to speak
more exactly, we should say the simplicity of the laws and principles
in obedience to which the imaginations of men are exercised. The
return of the painters, sculptors, and architects to the old types of
classical art after the reign of the Gothic seems at first sight as
if in the arts there could be nothing new under the sun: as if the
imagination, so fertile in creation during many centuries since the
establishment of Christianity, had been utterly worked out and come
to an end, and that there was nothing left but to repeat and copy what
had been done ages before.
There is, however, in reality more connection between classic and
mediæval art than appears on the surface, and although all the great
masters of the revival studied eagerly such remains of antique art as
were discovered in Italy during the early years of the renaissance,
they only came into direct contact with or absolute imitation of those
models occasionally; and the works of that age have a grace that is
peculiarly their own, and an inventiveness in painting and sculpture,
if not in architecture, that seems, when we look at such cities as
Venice and Florence, inexhaustible. The renaissance began in Italy
many years before the year 1500. Most changes, indeed, of manners or
arts which are designated by any century are perhaps more correctly
dated twenty years before or after its beginning, and in the notices
which we are here putting together we are compelled to make divisions
of time occasionally overlap each other.
The revival of learning in Italy was accompanied by other
circumstances which had a powerful influence on the arts, and
particularly on the sumptuary arts of the century. It has been already
remarked that while the nations of Europe were more or less convulsed
with war it was not easy or possible for the inhabitants, even the
wealthy, to do much in furnishing dwelling-houses with any kind of
comfort. Rich furniture consisted in a few costly objects and in
hangings such as could be carried about on sumpter horses or in
waggons, and, with the addition of rough benches, tables, and
bedsteads, could make bare walls look gay and comfortable, and offer
sufficient accommodation in the empty halls of granges and manors
seldom lived in, for the occasions of a visit or a temporary
occupation. Churches indeed were in those ages respected by both sides
in the furious contests that raged throughout Europe. The violation of
holy places was a crime held in abhorrence by all combatants, and
the treasuries and sacristies, therefore, of churches were full of
examples of every kind of accomplishment possessed by the artists
of the day. They contained objects collected there during many
generations, as was the case of shrines like that of the Virgin del
Pillar in Spain, of which the offerings so long preserved have been
very lately sold and dispersed, and represented the art of many
successive ages. But in private houses it was scarcely possible to
have any corresponding richness, though in the instance of kings and
potentates there was often much splendour.
As in England the fifteenth century saw the close of a series of great
wars and the establishment of one powerful government, so during its
conclusion and the beginning of the next century a similar disorder
gradually gave place to tranquillity in Italy.
The practices of painting gilt furniture of all kinds, and of
modelling terra-cotta work on the wood, were not altogether new
accomplishments or confined to the artists of one city. When,
therefore, the French having been driven out of Italy, the popes were
in security in Rome and the accomplished Medici family reigned
in Florence, those states as well as Urbino, Ferrara, and other
independent cities were free from the perpetual attitude of defence
against foreign invasion; they could indulge their enthusiasm for
classic art, and the impulse given to the study of it found a ready
response, as great noblemen while building palaces and digging
gardens came upon statues, frescoes, vases, bronzes, and many glorious
remnants of antiquity. In the various Italian states were artists well
skilled and carefully trained, and there was no difficulty in finding
distinguished names with whole schools of enthusiastic admirers behind
them who, with these precious objects in their view, formed their
style on the old classic models. We are to consider such acquirements
here only so far as they came to be applied to secular woodwork (of
which this cornice from Venice is an example) and the objects of daily
use; to coffers, chests, caskets, mirrors, or cabinets, sideboards
of various kinds, seats, tables, carriages and furniture of every
description.
[Illustration]
The best artists of the day did not hesitate to give their minds to
the making of woodwork and furniture in various materials and employed
every kind of accomplishment in beautifying them. Of this fine
renaissance period there are so many examples in the South Kensington
collection, and some of them of such excellence, that the student need
scarcely have occasion to travel beyond the limits of that museum to
illustrate the quattrocento and cinquecento furniture and woodwork.
Many materials were employed by the renaissance artists. Wood first
and principally in making furniture, but decorated with gilding and
paintings; inlaid with agate, carnelian, lapis lazuli and marbles of
various tints; with ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl; and with
other woods. They also made many smaller objects, such as mirror cases
in iron, damascened or inlaid with gold and silver. For many years,
however, mirrors continued to be of polished metal, the enrichment
being devoted to the outer case. Glass mirrors were not common till a
somewhat later period.
As the general material of furniture in the sixteenth century
continued to be wood, its chief decoration was sculpture. The number
of remarkable pieces of carved wood furniture belonging to this period
in the museum is considerable. The most striking are the chests,
cassoni, large coffers for containing clothes or ornamental hangings
and stuffs that were kept in them when not in use. Rooms, however
large, of which the walls, floors, and ceilings are decorated, do not
require many substantial objects in addition; and these chests, with
a table and chairs placed against the wall, nearly complete the
requirements of great Italian halls and corridors.
[Illustration]
The general form of the carved chests is that of a sarcophagus. They
are supported on claw feet, and have masks, brackets, or caryatid
figures worked into the construction as in the accompanying woodcut,
leaving panels, borders, or other spaces for historic sculpture. The
subjects are sometimes from Scripture, often from the poems of Ovid.
They are carved in walnut wood, which is free in grain and very
tenacious: and the work, like most of the old furniture carving, is
helped out with gilding. Sometimes the ground, at others the relieved
carvings are touched or completely covered with gilding. Most of these
fine chests are in pairs, and probably formed parts of still larger
sets, fours or sixes, according as they were intended for the wall
spaces of larger or smaller rooms or portions of wall between two
doors.
Carved chests commonly in use, and given to brides as part of their
dowry or as presents to married couples, or simply provided as the
most convenient objects both for receptacles and occasionally
for seats, were often made at less cost in cypress wood. They are
generally decorated with surface designs etched with a pen on the
absorbent grain of that wood, the ground being slightly cut out and
worked over with punches shaped like nail heads, stars, &c. Cypress
chests were especially used for keeping dresses or tapestries; the
aromatic properties of that timber being considered as a specific
against moth. This kind of chest, when intended to hold a bridal
trousseau, was occasionally made with small drawers and receptacles
inside for fans, lace, combs, or other feminine ornaments. Allusions
to cypress chests in England are numerous in the wardrobe and privy
purse accounts of Edward the fourth and his successors.
The tables of this period are sometimes solid (as n^{o.} 162, which is
covered with spirited designs of mythological subjects). Dinner tables
were "boards" fastened on trestles, according to the old usage already
alluded to, and could be removed when the meal was over; or several
could be laid together, as in our modern dining-room tables, to meet
the demands of the noble hospitality exercised in those days.
The Italian chairs of the quattrocento period have been spoken of
above. We have, however, another very rich and effective form of
chairs usual in the sixteenth century, and which were in general use
in Venice. In these the seat is fastened into two planks, one before
and one behind, as in the woodcut. The planks are richly carved, and
a third plank is let in to form a back. The several portions,
particularly the back, were sometimes sufficiently thick to admit of
carving in massive relief. The flanks of the back piece are usually
grotesque monsters, and the arms of the owner carved on a scutcheon
in the centre. They seem to have been generally richly gilt. They
also formed the decoration of a great corridor or hall, and were used
without cushions.
[Illustration]
The frames of pictures were bold and rich. Those of the previous
century had been mostly imitative of small Gothic shrines, being
generally for religious subjects and for use in churches or oratories.
In the cinquecento period they were square panels, carved and richly
gilt. There are in the Kensington museum remarkable examples of frames
made for mirrors, either for the sitting-rooms or saloons of the lady
of the house, or for her bedroom. Three of these are type pieces of
such productions. N^{o.} 7695 is a square frame carved in walnut,
standing on a foot, and meant to be carried about. From the daisies in
relief on the foot it may perhaps be ascribed to Marguerite of Valois,
and have been used in the court of Provence. Nothing in the collection
surpasses the elegance and perfection of the ornamental work on the
mouldings. The mirror itself is of polished metal. Another is in a
circular frame, n^{o.} 7694, shaped like a shield, and meant to be
hung up. It was probably made for a duchess of Ferrara. There are
classical details of architectonic kind on the edges of the carving,
which is highly finished. The mirror itself is of metal, and the back
has figures on it in relief and is solidly gilt. The third of these,
n^{o.} 7226, is larger. In design it is like a monumental mural
tablet, with a carved rich finish on the four sides, and the mirror
furnished with a sliding cover in the form of a medallion, containing
a female head of singular nobleness and beauty. In this case the
material is walnut relieved by broad surfaces of inlaid wood. We may
also mention the superb Soltykoff mirror, n^{o.} 7648. This is an
example of metal work throughout, the case, stand, and sliding cover
being of iron damascened with gold and silver in every variety of that
costly process.
[Illustration]
Some of the richest pieces of carved walnut furniture belonging
to this period are the bellows. As these are characteristic of the
Italian style of the period in furniture of various kinds, we give
woodcuts of two examples in the South Kensington collection. They
are generally of walnut touched with gilding; and in the form still
familiar to ourselves, which is as old as the classic times.
[Illustration]
Besides furniture carved in this way out of solid wood, there were
other materials used and other methods of decorating household
furniture. The tarsia or inlaid work has been alluded to. The
first methods were by geometrical arrangements of small dies; but
magnificent figure designs had been executed in inlaid wood in the
early period of the renaissance, and before it. Work of this kind was
made in two or three woods, and much of it is in pine or cypress. The
large grain is used to express lines of drapery and other movements by
putting whole folds or portions of a dress or figure with the grain
in one direction or another, as may be required. The picture is thus
composed of pieces inclined together; a few bold lines incised and
blackened give such outlines of the form as are not attainable by the
other method, and slight burning with an iron is sometimes added to
produce tone or shadow.
"'Tarsie' or 'Tarsiatura,'" says Mrs. Merrifield, "was a kind of
mosaic in woods. This consisted in representing houses and perspective
views of buildings, by inlaying pieces of wood of various colours and
shades into panels of walnut wood. Vasari speaks rather slightingly of
this art, and says that it was practised chiefly by those persons who
possessed more patience than skill in design; that although he had
seen some good representations in figures, fruits, and animals, yet
the work soon becomes dark, and was always in danger of perishing
from the worms and by fire. Tarsia work was frequently employed in
decorating the choirs of churches as well as the backs of seats and
the wainscoting. It was also used in the panels of doors."
Another method of ornamentation dependent on material that came into
use in this century was the Pietra Dura or mosaic panelling of hard
pebbles. The work is laborious and costly. Not only are the materials
(agate, carnelian, amethyst and marbles of all colours) expensive, but
each part must be ground laboriously to an exact shape and the whole
mosaic fitted together, a kind of refinement of the old marble work
called Alexandrinum. Besides being formed into marble panels for table
tops and cabinet fronts, pietra dura was let into wood, and helped
out with gay colours the more sombre walnut or ebony base of the
furniture.
Vasari, speaking of particular pieces of furniture of his day,
mentions a "splendid library table" made at the expense and by the
order of Francesco de' Medici in Florence. This table was "constructed
of ebony," that is, veneered with ebony, "divided into compartments by
columns of heliotrope, oriental jasper, and lapis lazuli, which have
the bases and capitals of chased silver. The work is furthermore
enriched with jewels, beautiful ornaments of silver, and exquisite
little figures, interspersed with miniatures and terminal figures of
silver and gold, in full relief, united in pairs. There are, besides,
other compartments formed of jasper, agates, heliotropes, sardonyxes,
carnelians, and other precious stones." This piece was the work of
Bernardo Buontalenti. Another piece of such work is described as a
table "wholly formed of oriental alabaster, intermingled with great
pieces of carnelian, jasper, heliotrope, lapis, and agate, with other
stones and jewels, worth twenty thousand crowns." Another artist,
Bernardino di Porfirio of Leccio, executed an "octangular table of
ebony and ivory inlaid with jaspers." This precious manufacture has
been patronised in the grand ducal factories down to recent times, and
is continued in the royal establishments of the king of Italy.
A feature which was strongly developed in the sixteenth century
furniture is the architectural character of the outlines. It has
already been observed that in the fifteenth century, chests, screens,
stall fronts, doors and panelling followed or fell into the prevailing
arrangements of architectural design in stonework, such as window
tracery, or wall tracery. But in the cinquecento furniture an
architectural character, not proper to woodwork for any constructive
reasons, was imparted to cabinets, chests, &c. They were artificially
provided with parts that imitated the lines, brackets, and all the
details of classic entablatures which have constructive reasons in
architecture, but which, reduced to the proportions of furniture, have
not the same propriety. These subdivisions brought into use the art of
"joinery." The parts obviously necessary for the purpose of framing
up wood, whether a box or chest, a door, a piece of panelling, or a
chair, offer certain opportunities for mouldings or carvings; some
are the thicker portions forming the frames, some the thin flat
boards that fill up the spaces. To add a variety of mouldings, such as
subdivide the roofs of temples or their peristyles, is, of course,
to depart from the carpenter's province and work, and rather to
take furniture out of its obvious forms for the express purpose of
impressing on it the renaissance type.
[Illustration: Knife case. Dated 1564.]
The artists of that time did this with the object of designing "in
character," and special models, such as the old triumphal arches, and
sarcophagi, at Rome, were in view in these designs. On both arches
and tombs sculptured bas-reliefs abounded. Figures reclined over the
arches, and were arranged in square compositions in the panels, for
which the upper stories of the arches made provision. The renaissance
cabinets fell into modifications of this ideal. A century later they
grew into house fronts, and showed doors, arches, and balustrades
inside, with imitative paved floors, looking-glasses set at angles
of 45°, so as to make reflections of these various parts; and in this
humorous fashion the inside of a walnut or ebony cabinet was turned
into the model of an Italian villa.
Again, in place of the running foliated borders and mouldings having
a continuous design, or of compositions of foliage, animals, &c.,
forming in each arch moulding or cornice line a homogeneous line or
circle, the renaissance arabesques introduced an entirely new method
of decoration. In arabesque ornament all sorts of natural objects are
grafted on a central stalk, or, as in the best work, on something like
the stem of a candelabrum. The resources of this method are limited
only by the fancy and skill of the artist, who grafts here a mask,
there a leaf on his stem, and so on. The temptation is the license
and discordance that come in when no unity is needed in a piece of
ornament, and no continuous effort of mind required to think out and
execute one definite idea in designing it. The central stem leads
to an exact balance or reversal of one half of each element in
the ornament, so that one half only of a panel or border has to be
_designed_. In the hands of great artists this kind of ornamentation
has been used with consummate grace.