who, after receiving the rudiments of education, was obliged while still
quite young to try to gain a livelihood by his own industry. This
child’s name was Bernard Palissy. He first learnt the trade of a
glazier, or rather of a glass-fitter and painter. This trade, while it
initiated him into the principles of drawing, and gave him a certain
insight into chemical manipulations, at the same time aroused in him a
taste for art and the study of natural sciences. While “painting figures
in order to gain his daily bread,” as he himself tells us in one of the
works he has left behind him, and which gives us the highest opinion of
his simple yet energetic nature, he applied himself to the study of the
true principles of art in the works of the great Italian painters--the
only artists then in repute. Owing to various circumstances the trade
of glazier proving unprofitable, he at once began the study of geometry,
and soon obtained credit, in the part of the country wherein he dwelt,
as “a clever draughtsman of plans.” Such comparatively mechanical labour
as this could not long suffice for the active vigour of a mind thirsting
after progress and discovery. Moreover, Palissy, while employed on his
calling as a land-surveyor, had never ceased to give close observation
to the structure and composition of geological strata. With the purpose
of dispelling the doubts in his mind, and also with the object of
obtaining substantial confirmation regarding the system he had already
originated, he began to travel. The result of his journeyings was the
inauguration of a theory which, after having long been contemptuously
rejected by the learned, was nevertheless destined to form the
foundation of principles which are now considered as the basis of modern
geological science.
[Illustration: Fig. 37.--A figured Border of an Enamelled Dish, by
Bernard Palissy.]
But if the certain knowledge which Palissy thought he had acquired as to
the early convulsions of the globe had succeeded in satisfying his own
mind, the glazier-surveyor (who was now a married man with a family)
still remained in straitened circumstances, and was obliged to find some
means of avoiding actual want. We must refer to what he himself says
more than a quarter of a century later, and when success had completely
crowned his efforts, to learn what were his recollections of his early
and hazardous experiments in a new channel. “Know,” says he, in his
expressive language, “that it is twenty-five years since an earthen
vessel was shown to me; it was turned, enamelled, and of such exquisite
beauty, that from that very moment I began to argue with myself, while
remembering observations made derisively to me by some persons when I
was painting figures. And seeing that they were beginning to give up the
use of these objects in the country where I lived, and that glazing also
was not in great demand, I set myself to think that had I but discovered
the art of making enamel, I might make earthen vessels and other
articles of beautiful appearance; for God had given me the capacity to
understand a little about ceramic painting, and from that instant,
without in the least regarding my utter ignorance of siliceous
substances, I set myself to discover enamels like a man groping in the
dark.”
It has been much disputed, but we may as well say at once to no purpose,
how to assign with certainty a particular locality whence came this
object which inspired Palissy; but whatever may have been its origin, it
seems to us to be a question of little moment, because at the time when
Palissy must have seen it, the Italian manufactories, and even those
which were afterwards established in various localities, had succeeded
in disseminating their wares far and wide; and, besides this, the works
of Palissy, which we still see, bear testimony to a style that was
peculiarly his own, and in some measure original.
However this may have been, here we have him seeking out and grinding
all kinds of substances, mixing them, and coating with them pieces of
ware which he first subjected to the action of an ordinary potter’s
oven, afterwards to the more powerful heat employed by glass-makers.
Then we see him building an oven in his own house--taking into his
service a working potter, to whom, on one occasion, when he has no money
for the payment of wages, he is obliged to give his own clothes; again
we find him turning, single-handed, a mill for grinding his materials
which ordinarily required “two powerful men” to work it; then again,
wounding his hands in repairing the oven that the fire cracked, and the
bricks and mortar of which had become “liquified and vitrified;” so that
he is obliged for several days “to eat his soup with his fingers tied up
in rags;” pushing the conscientiousness and zeal of an experimentalist
so far as to fall down in a state of insensibility on finding that the
whole contents of an oven, on which he had been relying, proved to have
numerous defects. In despite
[Illustration: BIBERON OF HENRI II WARE.
Or Oiron fayence. (Pourtales’ Collection.) Now in the possession of J.
Malcolm, Esq.]
of his poverty we see him destroying pieces of work that he considered
were not quite perfect, though a fair price was offered him for them,
merely because “they might bring discredit on him and loss of
reputation;” and finally, we see him breaking up and putting into the
fire, for want of other fuel, the flooring of his house and the
furniture of his humble abode.
The magnificent discovery, brought about by the single initiative of an
individual who had said that he would succeed, and who heroically
endured all kinds of misery, privations, and humiliations, in order to
attain his object, was the labour of not less than fifteen years.
“To console me,” relates Palissy, “even those from whom I had a right to
expect help laughed at me” (he here alludes to his family--his wife, and
children--who had not the same unbounded faith as himself in the
ultimate success of his labours); “they paraded the town exclaiming that
I was burning the woodwork of my house; thus was my credit injured, and
I was looked upon as a fool. Others said I was attempting to make base
coin. I went about quite humiliated, ashamed of myself. I owed money in
several quarters, and generally had two children out at nurse, and not
able to pay the cost. All ridiculed me, saying: ‘He deserves to starve,
because he has given up his trade.’
“Struggling on in this way, at the end of ten years I became so thin
that my legs and arms had no roundness of shape left about them; my legs
were all of a size (_toutes d’une venue_); so that as soon as I began to
walk, the garters with which I fastened my stockings used at once to
slip down, stockings and all, on to my heels.... For many years, having
nothing wherewith to cover my ovens, I was exposed all night long to the
winds and the rains, without receiving any help or consolation, except
from the screech-owls hooting on one side and the dogs howling on the
other.... Sometimes I found myself, with all my garments wet through
from the rain, going to bed at midnight, or at dawn of day; and when
proceeding in this condition to bed, I went reeling along without a
light, and stumbling from side to side, like a man drunk with wine; I
was overcome by previous sorrow, the more so because after
long-continued work I saw my labour lost. And on entering my chamber I
found a fresh persecution awaiting me--the complaints of my wife--worse
than the first, and which now makes me wonder how it was I did not die
of grief.... I have been in such anguish that many and many a time I
fancied I was at death’s door.”
At last, despite all these obstacles, disappointments, physical and
mental suffering, the determined experimentalist succeeded in his
anticipations, and gave to the world those works he called _rustics_,
and which were so original and so beautiful that they had but to be seen
in order to invite attention, and to gain for him all the praise, as
well as the profit, he received.
We have just intimated it was at Saintes that Palissy, when in search of
immortal fame, underwent his rude apprenticeship. A short time after he
had attained these definite results, religious questions having caused
some disturbances in Saintonge, the Constable de Montmorency, who had
been sent to suppress the Huguenot rising, had an opportunity of seeing
Palissy’s works: he requested that he should be presented to him, and at
once declared himself his friendly protector. And we must take this word
protector in its widest sense, for the potter, who had zealously
embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and who subsequently
preferred to be imprisoned for life rather than abjure his faith (if he
did not die in the Bastille, at least he was imprisoned there at the
time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew), indeed required protection, as
much for the exercise of liberty of conscience as for carrying on his
artistic labours. After Montmorency had commissioned him to execute some
considerable works, which also gained him the patronage of several
important personages, he obtained for him the favour of royalty. Palissy
was summoned to Paris, and received the title of “inventeur des
rustiques figulines du roi et de la reine-mère”--Henri II. and Catherine
de Médicis. He was lodged in the Tuileries; and was not long there
before he became renowned, not only for his ceramic productions, but
also for his scientific knowledge.
In the recent building operations at the Tuileries, on digging a trench
in the garden, the workshop of Bernard Palissy was discovered; being
recognised by fragments and various pieces of enamelled pottery with
figures in relievo. Among these was found a large fragment of the dish
of Palissy, known under the name of the Baptismal Dish, on account of
the subject represented thereon. In July, 1865, while excavating in the
part of the palace where the “Salle des Etats” has been built, the
workmen discovered, below the level of the surface soil, two ovens for
baking pottery, in a tolerably good state of preservation. One contained
pieces of those muffles (_gazettes_) Palissy is said to have invented,
and which were employed in baking delicate pieces of work--imprints of
various kinds of ornaments, and figures in altorelievo: two of these
are described by Palissy himself in the “Devis d’une grotte pour la
royne, mère du roy” (“device of a grotto for the queen, the king’s
mother”), and which he thus indicates in the following sentence:--“I
should wish to make certain figures from nature, following her so
closely, even to the small hair in the beard and eyebrows, as to make
them the natural size.” These peculiarities are to be seen in the
fragments of the moulds which have been discovered. In the same page
Palissy says, “Also there would be another, composed completely of
sea-shells of different kinds; that is to say, the two eyes of two
shells, the nose, mouth, and chin, forehead and cheeks, all made out of
sea-shells, as well as even the remainder of the body.” This was found
in fragments, as also a hand moulded from nature, and holding a sword of
ancient make (Fig. 39). Among the fragments moulded from the naked and
the draped form, is the one which we give (Fig. 40); it is thus
described by Palissy:--“Also for the sake of astonishing mankind, I
wished to make three or four (figures) draped, and with their hair
dressed in quaint ways, whose dresses and head-dresses shall be of
divers linen, cloths, or striped materials so natural that no man would
think but it was the object itself which the workman had wished to
imitate.”[4]
[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Ornamentation on Pottery by Bernard Palissy.]
We thus see how Palissy, called “Maître Bernard des Thuilleries,”
deserved the esteem of the sovereigns who desired he should be near
them.
M. Jacquemart says of Palissy ware:--“It is remarkable in more ways than
one--for its white paste with a shade of yellowish grey, for its
hardness, and its infusibility, equalling that of fine earthenware or
pipe-clay. These give it a special character, that distinguishes it from
Italian productions, the clay of which is of a dirty and dusky red. The
enamel has great brilliancy; it is hard, and is not unfrequently wavy
(_tresaille_). The colours vary a little, but they are bright--pure
yellow, yellow ochre, indigo blue, grey blue, emerald green produced
from copper, yellow green, violet brown, and manganese violet. As for
the white, it is somewhat dull, and cannot be compared with Luca della
Robbia ware; wherefore the most persevering researches of Palissy, who
invented all the processes which he employed in his work, aimed at the
attainment of greater brilliancy. The under part of Palissy ware is
never of a uniform tone of colour; it is spotted or tinted with blue,
yellow, and violet brown.
[Illustration: Figs. 39 and 40.--Fragments of Figures on which the
moulds have been found in one of Palissy’s Ovens at the Tuileries.]
“It would be exceedingly difficult, not to say impossible, to enumerate
the various shapes he was able to give to his enamelled ware. Combining
in
[Illustration: Fig. 41.--Goblet, by Bernard Palissy. (Museum of the
Louvre.)]
himself all the artistic talent of his day, he was at the same time a
skilful designer and an intelligent modeller; and thus he discovered a
thousand resources for the display of elegance and richness; sometimes
in the multiplicity of relievos and in the outline of his vases,
sometimes in the mere application of colour.... In many of his
productions, particularly dishes and bowls, are seen natural objects
represented with astonishing truthfulness as to form and colour; nearly
all these are modelled from nature, and grouped with perfect taste; from
the lower surface, rippled by streams of water in which fish of the
river Seine are swimming, coiled reptiles rise gracefully from among
fossil shells (we must remember that Palissy was a geologist), found in
the tertiary strata of Paris; on the _marli_ (the sloping edge of the
dish), amidst delicate ferns arranged in masses, lizards, crayfish, and
large-bodied frogs climb and jump (Fig. 42). The accuracy of their
movements, the truth of tones produced by a limited variety of
colours--all indicate a close observer. We must not, however, form our
opinion of Palissy from these _rustic_ works alone, but also from his
vases, where he introduced all the ornamental richness of those times,
and on which he took a pleasure in developing all his fertility of
composition and his knowledge as a designer.... On this point Palissy
followed the same law to which all artists of the sixteenth century were
subject--he was a worker in precious metals. By their graceful
originality, their fringed (_frangées_) borders, their figured
accessories, these vases put us in mind of metal. How could it have been
otherwise? Was not Benvenuto Cellini at that time, we will not say the
object of all imitations, for this would be an insult to the skilful
artists of that period, but at all events the ideal towards which the
inspirations of others were directed? As regards the human figure,
Palissy’s constant endeavour was to approach the Italian type; and as
doubtless the school of Fontainebleau furnished him with most of his
models, in the greater part of his figures we trace that graceful
_elongation_ of form, that elegant simplicity, which, in the works of
Jean Goujon, fall into mannerism (Figs. 43 and 44).
“Palissy did not limit himself to the production of small and
moderate-sized vases for ornamenting sideboards, buffets, tables, and
brackets; he raised pottery to the most gigantic proportions in his
_rustiques figulines_, intended as ornaments for gardens, grottoes,
fountains, and the halls of stately mansions. The castles of Nesle and
of Chaulnes, of Reux and of Ecouen, and the garden of the Tuileries,
contained some remarkable specimens. All have perished with the
devastation of the buildings in which they stood; a single fragment of a
capital, preserved in the Museum of Sèvres, proves the truthfulness of
the writers of the sixteenth century regarding the monumental creations
of the potter of Saintes.
“After the death of Palissy, in 1589, the art which he had created
insensibly declined, until soon it almost completely disappeared in
France.”
This latter remark has reference to the style which was peculiarly of
Palissy’s own invention, and not to the production of ceramic works
generally; though the art failed not to give evidence of a certain
vitality,
[Illustration: Fig. 42.--Enamelled Dish, by Bernard Palissy. (Museum of
the Louvre.)]
it employed as guides or models the fanciful examples of Italian ware,
in preference to the really masterly specimens of the French artist.
Among the different centres of manufacture which, at that period, were
deserving of notoriety, we must specially name Nevers, whence came
numerous examples characterised by subjects taken from biblical
narratives, as well as from Roman and contemporaneous times; Rouen,
where the manufacture probably was not of an earlier date than the
beginning of the seventeenth century, and which evidently had to provide
its full supply of dishes for the table when, owing to the heavy
expenses of war, the courtiers, following the example of Louis XIV.,
sent their plate to the mint, and “_se mirent en faïence_,” “took to
earthenware,” as Saint-Simon says. Lastly we have Montreuil-sur-Mer,
which, if we are to credit the specimens collected in the district by M.
Boucher de Perthes, one of our most learned antiquarians, possessed a
manufactory that produced some remarkable “open-work” vases.
[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Four-handled Water-jug. German ware of the
Sixteenth Century.]
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Egg-shaped Coffee-pot. German ware of the
Sixteenth Century.]
Let us also mention the Dutch pottery, called _Delft ware_, which, in
the beginning of the seventeenth century, began to find a place on all
sideboards and dressers. According to M. Brongniart, these came from a
manufactory founded prior, perhaps, to the sixteenth century. We also
instance the fine earthenware, in relievo, manufactured with undoubted
ability in Germany, especially in the town of Nuremberg. In the Louvre
and in the Cluny Museums may be seen magnificent specimens of enamelled
slabs and vases of architectural forms, ornamented with figures.
Majolica was equally esteemed on the banks of the Rhine. Many specimens
are found, dating from the latest years of the sixteenth century, in
which identity of form or similarity of _sigles_ (earths or clays) to
primitive works had led to their being, at first, classified among
Italian majolica. However, the majority of these examples, ornamented
with escutcheons and arabesques, combined generally with Latin or German
inscriptions, bear on the reverse a cipher in Gothic letters, leaving no
doubt as to the artist’s country.
Now a word on a question we ought not to pass in silence, though it yet
remains unanswered, and doubtless will never be explained.
Why is this name of _faïence_ commonly given in France, almost from the
revival of the ceramic art, to the productions of the new industry? Some
say, “because Faenza was the first among Italian manufactories that
introduced, generally, painted and ornamented potteries into France,
where it acquired great reputation.” Others discover in France itself, a
small town called Faïence, near Fréjus, in Provence, “where the
manufacture of enamelled clays was in full activity before there was any
evidence of it elsewhere;” and thus it gave its name to the pottery
called _majolica_ by the Italians: this would be nothing less than to
deprive Luca della Robbia of the merit, if not of the invention, at
least of priority. Unfortunately for this last opinion, those who state
it cannot bring in support of their assertion any certain details of the
nature of the productions ascribed to that locality, and which by their
very celebrity ought to have been safe from destruction. Thus it is
evident there is here a point of dispute regarding which it is difficult
to form a decisive opinion.
Though, in a certain measure, lying out of the province to which our
observations have hitherto been limited, we have still to notice a small
group of productions which are known by connoisseurs under the title of
_faïences fines d’Henri II._; of these there are not more than forty
authenticated specimens. The locality of this manufacture, which seems,
so to speak, to have been isolated--for the ware is unlike any
contemporaneous productions--is quite unknown. “We only know,” says M.
Jacquemart, “that most of the examples came from the south-west of
France, from Saumur, from Tours, and especially from Thouars. As to the
date, it is indelibly inscribed on the vases, some having the salamander
of Francis I., others the arms of France with three crescents
interlaced, the emblem adopted by Henri II. They consist of cups, ewers,
drinking-vases, oval sugar-basins, salt-cellars, and candlesticks. The
form is ornate and pure, and is relieved by elegant mouldings. On the
clay--a yellowish white, and covered with a crystallized varnish, the
basis of which is lead, and consequently is transparent--wind bands of
yellow ochre bordered with dark brown, and interlaced with all the
inventive richness which characterized the period; small designs in
green, violet, black, and occasionally in red, enhance this decoration.”
Much search has been made, but, as yet, without any reliable result, for
the name of the artist to whom might be attributed the creation of these
works, and of the individual style they denote.
However this may be, if England claims the first application of
pipe-clay to fine earthenware, the French can, by showing her the
_faïence d’Henry II._, prove that, two hundred years before, an unknown
artist in France was setting an example in that art in which England now
prides herself.
[Illustration: Fig. 45.--Ornament of a Dish, Italian ware. (Collection
of M. le Baron Alph. de Rothschild.)]
ARMS AND ARMOUR.
Arms of the Time of Charlemagne.--Arms of the Normans at the Time
of the Conquest of England.--Progress of Armoury under the
Influence of the Crusades.--The Coat of Mail.--The Crossbow.--The
Hauberk and the Hoqueton.--The Helmet, the Hat of Iron, the
Cervelière, the Greaves, and the Gauntlet; the Breastplate and the
Cuish.--The Casque with Vizor.--Plain Armour and Ribbed
Armour.--The Salade Helmet.--Costliness of Armour.--Invention of
Gunpowder.--Bombards.--Hand-Cannons.--The Culverin, the
Falconet.--The Arquebus with Metal-holder, with Match, and with
Wheel.--The Gun and the Pistol.
The most ancient and authentic document that presents to us a just and
almost perfect idea of the arms in use towards the end of the eleventh
century, is the celebrated tapestry of Bayeux, of which we have already
spoken.
It is sufficient to examine with some attention that complex and
illustrated narrative of the conquest of England in 1066, to learn what
was the general aspect of war at that period. But any one who has at all
studied the ancient historians and the annals of our earliest career as
a people, will not fail to recognise, as so many constituent parts
combining to form the equipment of war, most of those weapons that were
adopted among various races, the contests and the union of which was to
give birth to modern nations.
If we can rely on the testimony of some miniatures in manuscripts of the
time of Charlemagne, Roman customs are constantly recalled in the
costume and arms of the warriors of the eighth and ninth centuries (Fig.
46), “but with the modifications necessarily resulting from
contemporaneous corrupt taste,” as observed by M. de Saulcy, whom, it
may be remarked, we follow step by step, as it were, in the labours
which he has conscientiously devoted to the history of warlike arms;
“for at that time the helmets, the bucklers, and the swords had assumed
forms very unlike the models whereof they were supposed to be an
imitation. One can readily imagine that costume had become subjected to
the same sort of change as language, corrupted as this was by the
admixture of German manners with those of the nations subjected to
Rome.”
In the middle of the ninth century the Normans disembarking, possessed
themselves of Neustria, and introduced among the French nation, with
which they at first contended, and at length concluded a peace, an
entire series of defensive arms entirely novel in form, if not in their
nature. It is then, according to certain learned men, that warriors are
seen, in illustrated manuscripts, attired in dresses furnished with
small rings or iron scales, wearing pointed helmets, and using shields
cut horizontally above, and terminating at the base in a point more or
less sharp.