THE FRENCH GLASS OF THE RENAISSANCE
In the history of European glass the culminating point is perhaps
reached in the Venetian glass of the first half of the sixteenth
century—I am speaking, of course, from the artistic point of view. For
a century or more after this time our history is concerned with little
else than the spread of the Italian methods of manufacture and
decoration over the west of Europe. After the middle of the seventeenth
century the interest becomes more and more centred in the technical and
economical improvements in the manufacture. The invention of
plate-glass by the French, in England the use of coal instead of wood
in the glass-furnace, and the adoption of a heavy fusible type of glass
containing lead (an indirect consequence, perhaps, of this change of
fuel)—these are the really notable points in the history of the first
century of industrial advance. After the middle of the eighteenth
century England takes a more and more important position, and the
prominent question was the production of a glass of high technical
excellence at a greatly reduced price. Preoccupied as we were at that
time with the absorbing interest of this industrial revolution, less
attention was given in this country to the artistic side in the
manufacture of glass.
In the sixteenth century the interest of our subject centres in the
story of the emigration of skilled glass-workers from Venice and from
L’Altare, and in the more or less complete replacement of the old
methods, as these Italians found their way into nearly every corner of
Western Europe. It was technically the victory of the carefully
prepared _cristallo_ over the old mediæval _verre de fougère_ or
_wald-glas_. From another point of view the revolution was but one
phase in the spread of the Italian renaissance. In fact, in one respect
it was distinctly a renaissance, for the glass of Venice in composition
differed little from that made during the Roman domination: it belonged
essentially to the great Mediterranean family of soda-lime glass,
prepared, if not from sea-weed, at least from maritime herbs. On the
other hand, the indigenous glass which the _cristallo_ replaced was
almost without exception of forest origin, a potash glass made from the
roughly lixiviated ashes of beechwood or bracken.
I have said that these Italian glass-workers carried their new methods
all through Western Europe, but, as we shall see, their permanent
influence was not the same in each case. In Germany it was in a measure
but a passing fashion—neither the Italian designs nor the Italian
methods of manufacture ever became prevalent. The _wald-glas_, in an
improved form certainly, held its own, and indeed before the end of the
next century was threatening the supremacy of its Venetian rival.
In France, on the other hand, the victory was in a manner complete; the
old _verre de fougère_, it is true, long survived, but in an
acknowledged position of inferiority. In the Netherlands the case was
more complicated; for while on the one hand at Antwerp and at Liége the
typical Venetian _cristallo_ was more successfully imitated than
elsewhere out of Italy, on the other hand, in many places in the Low
Countries, the old green glass continued to be made, and the old
shapes, above all the essentially Teutonic _roemer_, never fell out of
favour. It so happens indeed that for the best renderings of examples
of both these schools of glass we must go to the works of the Dutch and
Flemish painters, rather than to the contemporary pictures of either
Germany or Italy. This is an interesting point about which I shall have
something more to say later on.
As regards Spain, the Italian influence became on the whole
predominant, but here the question is complicated by the existence, in
Catalonia at least, of a school of enamelled glass of which the
Venetian origin is by no means certain, and this school was already
well developed before the end of the fifteenth century. Finally, in the
case of our own country, the Venetian emigrants who came for the most
part by way of the Low Countries, had soon to divide the hitherto
almost free field with glass-workers from Normandy and Lorraine.
It is only of late years that the full significance of this emigration
of glass-workers from Murano and from L’Altare has been recognised. A
distinguished Belgian antiquary, M. Schuermans, President of the Cour
d’Appel at Liége, about the year 1880—following in this in the steps
of his countryman the late M. Alexandre Pinchart, and in a measure also
in those of M. Houdoy (_Verrerie à la façon de Venise_, Paris,
1873)—began a systematic investigation of the subject, and during a
period of ten years, from 1883 to 1892, contributed to the pages of a
learned periodical published at Brussels (_Bulletin des Commissions
Royales de l’Art et de l’Industrie_) a series of letters—for so M.
Schuermans modestly called them, though they were in fact so many
treatises, extending some of them to more than a hundred pages—packed
full with the results of his researches. One of the most curious
sources of information M. Schuermans found in the reports sent from the
Venetian embassies and agencies in France and elsewhere to the Council
of Ten at Venice. It was not the least important duty of the diplomatic
agents of the Republic to trace out the fugitive Muranese
glass-workers, to endeavour to induce them, by threats or promises, to
return to their homes, and if unsuccessful in this, to denounce them to
the authorities in Venice, who might then proceed to throw into prison
the unhappy families of these recalcitrant workmen. In extreme cases
there are hints of more drastic measures in dealing with the traitors
themselves—for so they were regarded—but I do not think that any
instance of assassination has been definitely made out for the time of
which we are now speaking. It is certainly strange that the only known
cases of such judicial murders occurred at Vienna as late as the
eighteenth century. The story was told long ago by Daru in his
_Histoire de Venise_ (_Pièces Justificatives_), and I do not know that
it has ever been refuted.
Not that these extreme measures were at all times carried out with
equal energy. At times, for political or other reasons, little
restraint appears to have been put upon the wandering forth of the
Muranese glass-workers; while at others the Council of Ten seems to
have regarded the question as one of the utmost moment, aroused perhaps
by reports that seemed to prove that the glass monopoly of the state
was endangered. This was the case at the end of the fifteenth century,
again towards the middle of the seventeenth, and more especially at the
end of that century, when the Venetians began to find their industry
seriously threatened by their German rivals.
In the sixteenth century, as a contemporary writer puts it, ‘_Tous
les rois et princes désiraient et affectaient avoir en leurs royaumes
cette science_’: that is to say, the knowledge of the methods of
preparing the true _cristallo_. To obtain this knowledge from Murano
was difficult and even dangerous. What wonder, then, that recourse
was had to the Consuls of the glass-workers’ guild at L’Altare? These
officials seem to have been always ready to negotiate for the supply
to foreign princes, or even to private individuals—if the requisite
payment was forthcoming—of one or more of their skilled gentleman
glass-workers.[165] But in this case, too, a keen eye was kept upon
these men: they were bound by the strictest oaths to practise their
craft, when in foreign lands, with the greatest secrecy; above all
they were forbidden to take any apprentices from the people among
whom they were working. In France, where so many of these Altarists
settled, these restrictions were the cause of constant friction, but
so successfully were they as a rule enforced, that we find that, in
the case of more than one centre of the new industry, it was
necessary during a period of at least a century to have recourse from
time to time to the original source at L’Altare, to replace the
Italian workmen who had died or wandered off to other towns. For like
their rivals from Murano, these Altarists were always on the move. We
are reminded in this of the wandering porcelain ‘arcanists’ of the
eighteenth century, who carried from one German court to another the
secrets of their craft. To give but a single example; M. Schuermans
has traced one of these _gentilshommes de verre_ in migrations that
led him successively to London, Liége, Maestricht, Rouen, and Paris.
In what respect, if in any, did the glass manufactured by these
‘licensed’ craftsmen from L’Altare, differ from that made by their
rivals the ‘outlaws’ from Murano? This is a question that we are not in
a position to answer. That there was some difference in style of
working, and not merely in the technical excellence of the glass, would
seem to be proved by the expression ‘_à la façon d’Altare_,’ or ‘_ad
uso d’Altare_,’ so often applied to it. There is no doubt that the
glass made ‘_à la façon de Venise_’ was, on the whole, regarded as of
greater excellence, and that in the impossibility of obtaining workmen
from Murano, the resort to the Consuls at L’Altare was in a measure a
_pis aller_. We must not, however, as has sometimes been done, look
upon the craftsmen from the latter town as incapable of producing
anything of artistic merit. On the contrary, they not only turned out a
true _cristallo_, but much of the enamelled glass that was so
successfully made in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
came in all probability from furnaces worked by Altarists.
In fact, our ignorance on this point affords an excellent example of a
difficulty that is met with again and again in this history of
ours,—the difficulty, I mean, of controlling our literary material by
means of the scanty examples of glass that have come down to us. It
would require a large shelf in a library to hold all the bulky volumes
dealing with the history of French glass that have of late years been
published, works that are due above all to the local patriotism and the
industry of provincial investigators. For books of this kind, the
fashion was set as long ago as 1864 by M. Benjamin Fillon in his _L’Art
du Verre chez les Poitevins_. Since then have appeared not mere
_brochures_, but in many cases portly volumes tracing the history of
the manufacture in Normandy, Picardy, Lorraine, Nevers, Lyons, and
Provence. M. Schuermans has devoted to France a long letter, chiefly
concerned with the settlements of Altarist workmen (_op. cit._, vol.
xxxi.). And yet not only are specimens of glass, undoubtedly French, of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries comparatively rare, but in very
few cases can anything more than a guess be made as to the provinces to
which these specimens are to be attributed. Such attributions indeed,
when attempted, have for the most part had to be based either upon the
armorial bearings forming part of the enamelled decoration, or again
upon the localities where the glasses have been found—and these are
criteria that fail in most cases.
Among the many anomalies that we encounter in the course of this
inquiry—and surely in no kindred branch of art history are so many met
with—there is nothing more surprising than the numerous important
‘developments’ of glass of one kind or another, for which we may search
in vain a rational explanation—unless, indeed, it is the corresponding
fact of the unexplained barrenness of certain periods and countries
where such poverty would have been the least expected. One source of
this apparent caprice in the presence or absence of glass of artistic
merit at times and at places where the contrary might have been looked
for, may be found, perhaps, in the fact that although, since Roman days
at all events, the making of glass has always been an important
industry, it is an industry that has only incidentally come into
connection with the æsthetic movements of the time.[166] Some such
explanation may perhaps be given for the comparatively subordinate
place taken by France in the history of artistic glass, at least until
quite recent days. In one department of the vitreous arts the French
occupied no doubt for a time the premier place—the stained glass of
their cathedrals is acknowledged to be the finest in Europe. But in our
branch of the manufacture, a branch for which, curiously enough, the
French alone have provided a name—_la verrerie_—that nation has never
occupied a prominent position. Since Roman times, the first place as
producers of glass vessels of artistic importance has been held in
succession by Byzantine Greeks, by Saracens, by Venetians, by Germans,
and for a moment by the English. It is only quite of late, since the
commencement of the last quarter of the nineteenth century in fact,
that any claim for such a position could be made for the French. And
yet, in spite of this, the literature of that special subdivision of
the _arts du feu_ with which we are here concerned is especially a
French one, and this is true not only for the technical and industrial
side of the subject, but for the artistic and historical in an even
greater degree.
I have spoken of the determined way in which these wandering Italians
kept themselves apart from the native workmen, so that the secrets of
their craft were preserved through more than one generation. In time,
however, in France at any rate, not a few of these Italian craftsmen
became sedentary, and not the least curious result of the recent
researches by French and Belgian _archivistes_ has been to show how
certain well-known families of glass-makers from L’Altare settled down
in various parts of France, where their representatives may now be
found, many of them still engaged in the same work. So that, thanks to
these investigations, the Saroldi of L’Altare have been provided with
distant cousins in the Sarode family of Poitou; in similar manner the
Ferri are represented by the Ferry of Provence, great glass-masters at
the present day; the Massari by the Massary of Lorraine; and the
Bormioli by the Bormiolles of Normandy and the Nivernais. All these
four families were admitted long since to the noblesse of France[167]
(Schuermans, _Letter XI._, 1892).
It is difficult to form any definite idea of the nature of the craft
secrets of these Italians. It can hardly have related to the more
obvious materials employed, for as early as 1555 (and it was only about
the year 1548 that the great emigration of the Altarists began) the
Oriental soda, the _rocchetta_ of Neri, which was brought by Venetian
galleys from Alexandria, had in France been already displaced by the
Spanish soda or _barilla_, a material that has held its place until
recent times. This _barilla_ was made from the famous soda plant, the
_Salsola sativa_, which, we are told, was grown from seed in various
parts of the province of Murcia, and exported from the adjacent port of
Alicante. So again the quartz pebbles from the bed of the Ticino, so
highly prized by the early Venetian glass-makers, were early replaced
by the pure white sand of Étaples.[168]
There is, however, in this connection, one point worth notice. It is
impossible to prepare a workable glass from quartz and alkali alone;
the presence of a certain quantity of lime is essential. Now in the
forest glass—the _verre de fougère_—sufficient lime (or equivalent
bases) is provided by the impurities in the crude potash employed; but
this is no longer the case when the more carefully prepared Oriental or
Spanish soda takes its place: it is now necessary to supply additional
lime. It is not impossible that the secret of the shrewd Italians may
have lain in this direction.
When speaking of the mediæval glass of France, I have brought forward
some evidence to show that, by the fourteenth century at least, vessels
of glass must have been produced in large quantities for domestic use.
This of course was, without exception, _verre de fougère_, essentially
the glass of the people, which for long was little influenced by the
new Italian methods. It was this glass chiefly that was hawked round
the country by itinerant vendors. Their cry was well known in
Paris—‘_Gentils verres, verres jolis—à deux liards les verres de
pierre!_’ Others, as in old days at Rome (see the quotation from
Martial on p. 82, note), collected broken glass to the cry of
‘_Chambrières, regardez-y!—Voirre cassez, Voirre cassez!_’[169]
Bernard Palissy, writing towards the end of the sixteenth century,
gives but a mean idea not only of the hawkers, but of the makers of
glass in his day:—‘Je te prie, considère un peu les verres qui, pour
avoir esté trop communs entre les hommes, sont devenuz à un prix si vil
que la plupart de ceux qui les font vivent plus méchaniquement que ne
font les crocheteurs de Paris ... et ces verres sont venduz et criez,
par les villages, par ceux mêmes qui crient les vieux chapeaux et les
vieilles ferrailles’ (quoted by Gerspach, p. 193).
It was only when the secrets of the pure _cristallo_ and the
application of enamels were introduced from Italy that glass began to
take a more honourable position in France. We cannot safely trace back
the foreign influence to an earlier date than the middle of the
fifteenth century, and it was not brought into full play till just a
century later.
The name of René, ‘king of Sicily and Jerusalem,’ and ruler under
various titles in Provence, Anjou, and Lorraine, was at one time a name
to conjure with in matters connected with art and literature, above all
in the south of France. Of late years there has been a tendency to
strip this much harassed king of many of his claims to distinction as a
patron of the arts. There seems, however, every reason to connect his
name with the introduction of the finer sorts of glass into France,
not, of course, of the industry as a whole, though even this was at one
time claimed for René. There is evidence to show that as early as 1443
a member of the Ferro family[170] of L’Altare was working for him at
Goult, in Provence. This would be the earliest instance known to us of
Italian glass-workers in France.
King René, we are told, presented to his nephew Louis XI. some pieces
of glass ‘_molt variolés et bien peincts_.’ But we can hardly refer to
so early a date the beaker of enameled glass formerly preserved at Aix,
painted inside with the kneeling figure of the Magdalen by the side of
her Master, so arranged that the former was only visible when the cup
had been drained; so that, as the inscription quaintly expressed it:—
‘_Qui bien boira
Dieu verra
Qui boira tout d’une haleine
Verra Dieu et la Madelaine._’
It was but a few years later, in 1448, that the famous charter of which
a nearly contemporary copy has fortunately been preserved, was granted
to certain glass-workers in Lorraine by Jean de Calabre, governor of
that duchy in place of his father, King René. In this document we have
early evidence of the claim of the glass-workers to the rights of
gentlemen.[171] Full recognition is given to the ‘_plusieurs beaux
droitz, libertez, franchises et prérogatives, et dont eulx et leurs
prédécesseurs ayant joui et usé de tous temps passez et esté tenus et
réputez en telle franchise comme chevaliers estimez et gens nobles
dudit duchié de Lorrainne_.’ Then follows a list of all these
privileges, not the least important being the exemption from ‘_toutes
tailles, aydes, subsides, d’ost, de giste et de chevaulchiées
quelconques_.’
This is by no means the earliest French document in which the claim to
some kind of nobility is made for the profession. As far back as the
later thirteenth century, in the reign of Philippe le Bel, the
glass-workers of Champagne claimed similar rights, basing their
pretensions on certain edicts of Constantine and on others found in the
Theodosian Code! Charles VI., whose interest in the manufacture of
glass has been already referred to (p. 137), in his _Lettres Royales_
of 1399, granted important rights to the glass-makers, ‘_à cause de la
noblesse du dict mestier_.’ These privileges, however, were confined to
those whose ancestors had followed the craft for several generations.
But for all this, these poor ‘_gentilshommes de verre_’ never obtained
that complete recognition in France that had always been granted to
their brother craftsmen at Venice and L’Altare, and their claims at
times exposed them to ridicule. There is an often-quoted epigram,
directed against one of their number (it is probably by François
Maynard, a follower of Ronsard), which well expresses the popular
feeling with regard to their position—
‘_Votre noblesse est mince;
Car ce n’est pas d’un prince,
Daphnis, que vous sortez.
Gentilhomme de verre,
Si vous tombez à terre,
Adieu vos qualités._’
The question of these _gentilshommes verriers_ was fully discussed by
the late M. Garnier in his book upon glass (_La Verrerie_, p. 174
_seq._), and he quotes passages from contemporary documents to show
both the extent of the claims and the ambiguous position actually held
by these needy gentry in the eighteenth century. At that time they were
still always referred to as _gentilshommes_, and they vindicated their
social status by fighting duels among themselves. Their position,
however, was often very wretched, less so, indeed, in Normandy than in
Lorraine, where the competition of the Germans was so keen. It is a
significant fact that at the Revolution they as a body joined the party
of the _émigrés_, and actually petitioned M. D’Artois to enrol them in
a special corps. One point is clear: the profession of glass-worker was
at all times in France open to the nobility, and this, of course, was
not the case with other crafts and trades.
This long digression upon the position of the glass-workers in France
was started by certain expressions in the charter granted to the
glass-makers of Lorraine by the son of King René. Not a little interest
attaches to the production of this eastern district; its history, as
concerns glass, differs from that of the more essentially French
provinces.[172] Here the Italians, whether from Murano or L’Altare,
appear to have had little influence. In Lorraine, as in the lower Rhine
country and in the bishopric of Liége—closely related districts—the
making of glass had probably been carried on continuously from Roman
times. In the Ardennes, and especially in the forests of Argonnes and
in the Vosges, the manufacture early took on a purely industrial
character. At the end of the sixteenth century it was claimed by the
glass-makers of the last district that they supplied Switzerland, the
Low Countries, and England with glass; and we shall see later on that
it was from glass-workers from Lorraine, more definitely from the
western Vosges, that we in England learned so much in the later
sixteenth century. These Lorrainers owed their chief fame to their
skill in making window-panes and mirrors, and the old tradition may be
held to be still carried on in the great glass-works at Baccarat, near
Lunéville.
I have no space to follow the working of the new methods in Poitou and
in the south, but a few words may be said of the glass-houses
established at NEVERS in the sixteenth century. At that time the
dukedom of the Nivernais was held by the Gonzaga family of Mantua, who
had already acquired the marquisate of Montferrat, upon which the town
of L’Altare was dependent. Louis of Gonzaga, who died in 1595, was as a
patron of the arts quite abreast of his time, and we may note that
besides his possessions in France and Italy he held much land in
Flanders and the Liége country, and that he was married to a princess
of the house of Cleves. The old town of Nevers became for a time an
artistic centre of some importance. In the handsome renaissance palace
built in part by this said Louis (his arms are to be seen carved in
bold relief on the walls), there is now gathered together an important
collection of the enamelled fayence for which the town is famous, and
also a few examples of the local glass, but none of this last is, I
think, of so early a date as the sixteenth century. Altarists had
doubtless come to Nevers before the time of the Duke Louis, but it was
during his rule that the Saroldo family settled here, a family famous
especially for their skill in the use of glass enamels. To the Saroldo
succeeded the Ponta family; and in the seventeenth century Jean
Castellano came from Liége: in addition to these Altarists, Venetian
workmen were employed at times. It is, indeed, a noticeable fact that
here in the very centre of France these glass-works should, for
something like two hundred years, have been dependent upon Italian
workmen.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXV_
FRENCH GLASS OF RENAISSANCE
1. STATUETTE OF LOUIS XIV. COLOURED ENAMELS 2. MAN WITH MUFF. ON STAND
OF DRESDEN PORCELAIN 3. BURETTE OF SPLASHED GLASS]
The glass of Nevers acquired some general renown in the seventeenth
century. Thomas Corneille, the younger brother of the great dramatist,
calls the town a ‘_petit Murane de Venise_,’ and praises the ‘_variété
des divers ouvrages de verre qui s’y font et qu’on transporte dans
toutes les provinces de la France_.’ In this case—quite exceptionally
as regards France—we can associate a special _genre_ or application of
glass—a somewhat trifling one, to be sure—with the local
glass-houses. In the already mentioned museum in the Ducal Palace may
be seen some of these ‘_gentillesses a’émail propres à orner les
cabinets, les cheminées et les armoires_.’ Here may be found landscape
scenes with cows and shepherdesses built up of fragments of glass of
various colours,—these childish compositions are apparently executed
with the blow-pipe. We are told in the journal of Jean Héroard, the
physician to Louis XIII., that when that king was a child he amused
himself with certain ‘_petits chiens de verre et autres animaux faits à
Nevers_.’ Among the scanty specimens of French glass in the British
Museum are some quaint little figures, about four inches in height,
built up of coloured glass enamels. We see there a little statuette of
Louis XIV. strutting along attired as a Roman emperor; there is another
of St. James the Apostle. These characteristic examples of _verroterie_
may very plausibly be referred to the glass-blowers of Nevers at the
end of the seventeenth century[173] (Plate XXXV. 1).
The province of NORMANDY has played a not unimportant part in the
history of glass. It was from the Norman duchy and from Brittany,
according to the tradition preserved at L’Altare, that the
glass-workers wandered forth in the tenth or eleventh century to find a
more peaceable home at L’Altare, in the mountains above the Ligurian
coast. As early as the year 1302 we hear of the famous glass-house at
La Haye, in the forest of Lyons, near Rouen. This is in a charter which
mentions incidentally the bracken, the ‘_feucheriam ad faciendum
vitrum_’—for all this early glass was, as I have said, _verre de
fougère_—which was to be cut only at specified times. It was here,
about the year 1330, that Philippe de Cacqueray is said to have first
made the _plasts de verre_, otherwise known as _verre de France_,[174]
for long the most important product of the Norman glass-houses. These
_plasts_ were indeed merely small sheets of glass, with a thickening or
‘bull’s-eye’ in the centre; they were made by the familiar ‘spinning’
process, which, however, must surely have been known before the
fourteenth century. In any case this _verre de France_ was widely
exported at a later time, and much of it must have found its way into
England.[175] It would appear that the gentlemen of the _grosses
verreries_ where this window-glass was made, held their heads above
those of _petites verreries_ which turned out only ‘hollow ware,’ and
this fact would point to the outcome of the latter works not being of a
very superior kind. If, however, we may judge from the examples
reproduced by M. Gerspach (_L’Art de la Verrerie_, figs. 104-113) from
the collection of M. le Breton, who has done for Norman glass what M.
Fillon has done for that of Poitou, the table-ware made in Normandy
during the seventeenth century possessed no little artistic merit, and
what is more, it had a _cachet_ of its own.
In the seventeenth century, however, the history of glass in France
centres round the manufacture of plate-glass by the new process of
_coulage_ or casting. After the middle of the century a demand arose in
France for large sheets of clear glass, not so much for windows, it
would seem, as for the tall mirrors that were now coming into fashion,
and again for the _portières_ of the ‘glass-coaches’ of the nobility.
Colbert, the great minister of the early and glorious days of Louis
XIV., was in despair because the large panes of glass suitable for
these purposes had to be obtained from Venice or from Nuremberg. After
an unsuccessful attempt to establish a colony of Muranese workmen in
Paris, Colbert had recourse to a Norman family of glass-makers, the De
Néhou, who had lately succeeded the De Cacqueray at Tourlaville, near
Cherbourg. It was in 1675 that Louis Lucas de Néhou was put in charge
of the royal glass-works at Paris, where he perfected his great
discovery of the method of casting glass. He was able to turn out
sheets of unprecedented size by a process in which the ‘metal’ was
poured upon frames, spread out evenly by rollers, and subsequently
polished.
The _Manufacture Royale des Glaces_ was removed in 1693 to the Château
de St. Gobain, not far from Laon. The St. Gobain works have for two
hundred years held a pre-eminent position in Europe for the manufacture
of plate-glass. This subject of plate-glass is indeed a little outside
our limits: for the student of the architecture and the decorative arts
of the eighteenth century it is, however, one of no little importance.
I have been able to do little more than select a few examples that have
seemed to me of especial interest from the well-filled records of the
French glass-workers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
many important centres have been passed over without comment,—Nantes,
for instance, frequented above all by the Altarists; and Poitou, the
source, according to M. Fillon, of many of the finest extant examples
of French enamelled glass. In both these districts members of the
Saroldo family settled—in Brittany they were prominent for over two
centuries.
In Paris, or rather in the Isle de France, the glass-works of St.
Germain-en-Laye were for a time under direct royal patronage. It was
there, soon after 1552, that Teseo Mutio made for Henri II. ‘_verres,
myroirs et canons_.’[176] Although the king pronounced Mutio’s work to
be equal to that of the Venetians, these glass-houses had but a short
life.
In 1604 a special commission was appointed in Paris to deal with the
difficulty that arose from the obstinate refusal of the Altarists to
teach the French apprentices the secrets of their craft. It was
proposed to get over this obstacle by the naturalisation of the
Italians, but to judge from the continued importation of fresh batches
of foreigners, this measure had but little practical result.
But what examples, it may be asked, can we point to that would throw
light on the nature of the glass made during these centuries by this
succession of Italians, to say nothing of the production of the native
_gentilshommes_? Nowhere in France, as far as I know, is there to be
found anything in the nature of a representative collection to
illustrate the history of native glass. The nearest approach is no
doubt to be discovered in the scattered examples in the Louvre, and
above all in the Hôtel de Cluny, where there are many curious specimens
of the French enamelled glass of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
It is to the Venetian enamelled glass of the fifteenth century, to the
goblets of the _coppa nuziale_ class, that we must go back to find the
prototype of what is by far the most interesting family of French
glass. In France these _verres à pied_, enamelled with portrait-heads
or symbolical figures, continued in vogue well into the seventeenth
century, long after the fashion for such work had passed away at
Venice. The enamelling itself on this French glass is not remarkable
for brilliancy, but there is often some native _verve_ in the treatment
of the figures, and a true Gallic ring about the mottoes and verses
that accompany them. Of these ‘_devises, souhaits, proverbes,
dédicaces, vers et maximes_,’ we may distinguish two classes: in the
one case they are of a more or less gallant character, or contain
personal references; in the other a religious sentiment or a pious
quotation is found, generally of such a nature as to suggest that the
original owner belonged to the reformed church. It is sometimes
difficult nowadays to seize the connection between the device and the
subject which it accompanies. Thus on a fine stemless goblet in the
Musée de Cluny we see three halberdiers standing as on sentry duty; the
accompanying motto, ‘_En la sueur de ton visaige tu mangeras le pain_,’
has been interpreted as referring to the hard life of the soldier. Of a
more gallant character are the figures and devices on a goblet of
yellow enamelled glass in the British Museum (Slade, No. 824). A
gentleman in the costume of the time of Henri II. offers a flower to a
lady with the remark, ‘JE SUIS A VOVS.’ The latter—she holds a
padlocked heart in her hand—replies ‘MÕ CUER AVÉS.’ In addition to
these figures we see a goat (_bouc_) drinking from a vase, and this we
may connect with the inscription that encircles the bowl—‘JE SVIS A
VOVS JEHAN BOUCAU ET ANTOYNETE BOUC.’ This is doubtless a marriage cup,
and the name Boucau points, it is said, to a Provençal origin.
As in our country, though in a somewhat less degree, the Gothic feeling
in design lingered long in France, at least in the more remote
provinces. An enamelled glass basin, preserved in the museum at Rennes
(figured by M. Gerspach, p. 199), bears round the margin in large
Gothic letters the words—PRION ⁝ DIEU ⁝ QUI ⁝ NOUS ⁝ PARDON ⁝ 1597. On
the ground of the style of decoration, to say nothing of the lettering,
this bowl might well, in the absence of the date, have been referred to
the fifteenth century.
Perhaps the oldest example that has been preserved of this French
enamelled glass is the tazza in the Cluny Museum, with the arms of
Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany. This cup must date from the early
years of the sixteenth century.
There is one variety of enamelled glass, Venetian in its origin, which
we in England generally associate with France, although there are scant
references to it in the French authors who have described the glass of
their country. I refer to the ‘splashed’ glass, an old method of
decoration indeed, for we have found something very like it on certain
little unguent vases of the ancient Egyptians. In the present case the
enamels—red, yellow, blue, and white—lie in oval masses on the
surface, reminding one in some cases of the sections of the pebbles on
a piece of polished pudding-stone. How these enamels were splashed on
to the unfinished _paraison_ has been already described (p. 64). I may
add that the little barrel-shaped flask (the _barillet_ or _bariz_ of
the old writers) to which this decoration is sometimes applied, is a
characteristic French form.
Among the French glass in the British Museum may be seen some little
scent-bottles or burettes of moulded glass, decorated with
_fleurs-de-lis_ in relief. These are generally attributed to a certain
Bernard Perrot of Orleans, to whom, in 1662, extensive privileges were
granted by Colbert. We are told by a contemporary writer (Abraham du
Pradel, _Livre Commode_, 1691) that this Perrot imitated agates and
gems as well as the porcelain of China, and that he cast his glass into
moulds to obtain bas-reliefs and other ornaments. This early reference
to the copying of porcelain by means of opaque white glass is of some
interest. I do not know what precise source has been found for the
little cups of this milky glass of which there are some examples among
the French glass in the British Museum—they are painted with a rudely
executed floral decoration of a somewhat Oriental type—but they may
without doubt be connected with one of the many attempts made at this
time or somewhat later to imitate the porcelain of the Far East. This
opaque white French glass should be compared with a very similar ware
made at Barcelona, of which something will be said in the next chapter.