THE RENAISSANCE GLASS OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS AND OF SPAIN
Before going on to speak of the glass made in Spain, it will be well to
say a few words of that made in the Spanish Netherlands during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Here, as might be expected from the course of trade, the Venetian
influence was early felt, and before long became predominant. In the
northern provinces, on the other hand, the old Teutonic traditions,
both as to form and material, continued on the whole unchanged to a
much later period, so that the glass of the United Provinces will be
best dealt with in connection with that of Germany.
Already in the fourteenth century the Venetian galleys brought the
glass of Murano to the Flemish ports. In some cases this glass was held
worthy of being mounted in silver. A goblet and an _aiguière_ are
mentioned in an inventory of 1379 as the property of Charles V. of
France. These pieces are indeed described as ‘_voirres blants de
Flandre_’: it is, however, very probable that they came in the first
place from Venice.
As early as 1541 Venetian glass-workers were settled at Antwerp, but,
as in France, the great invasion took place shortly after the middle of
the century. It must be borne in mind that what we know of the
wanderings of these _gentilshommes de verre_ from Venice and from
L’Altare is derived almost exclusively from the researches of Belgian
antiquaries and _archivistes_. In the already quoted works of Houday,
of Pinchart, and above all in the earlier and later letters of the
Belgian judge, the President Schuermans, we have a wealth of
information. M. Schuermans has traced these Italian glass-workers to
Antwerp, to Brussels, to Namur, to Liége, Maestricht and Huy, and in
the northern provinces to Bois-le-Duc, Middelburg, Haarlem, and
Amsterdam. There was a great rivalry between the Muranese, who on the
whole predominated at Antwerp, and the Altarists, whom we find for the
most part at Liége: these were the two most important centres. The Low
Countries indeed became before long a second home to these Italians,
whence they wandered out again to France, England, and Spain.
While at Antwerp the true Venetian _cristallo_ was imported free of
duty, the imitations of that glass, the _voirre de cristal, à la
faschion de Venise_, made over the French frontier at Mézières or in
Germany, and often difficult to distinguish from the originals, were
strictly excluded, and these fiscal regulations were enforced by the
most tyrannical measures. The case is well put by Mr. Hartshorne:
‘There were,’ he says, ‘in the Low Countries in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, real Venetian glasses imported from Venice,
Venetian glasses legally made in the Low Countries, those illegally
made, and foreign imitations of Venetian glass’ (_Old English Glasses_,
p. 39). Apart from these varieties of _cristallo_ glass, the old _verre
de fougère_ doubtless continued to be manufactured.
Before the end of the sixteenth century, the glass-houses of Antwerp
where glass _à la façon de Venise_ was made had acquired a European
reputation. They stood quite apart from the other furnaces in France or
in the Netherlands where Italians were employed. Lodovico Guicciardini,
the historian of the Netherlands, speaks as early as 1567 of the
‘_vassella di vetro alla Veneziana_’ made in Antwerp, and in the later
editions of his work (_Descrizione di Tutti Paesi Bassi_) some further
details are given. The testimony of another Florentine, Neri, from
whose little book on glass I have already quoted, is still stronger. It
was at Antwerp, he tells us, not at Venice, that he had studied the
processes of glass-making.
If Antwerp thus early held a commanding position in Spanish Flanders,
in the Walloon country the glass-houses of Liége in the course of the
seventeenth century grew to a position of even greater importance. This
was due above all to the enterprise of the great firm of the De
Bonhommes, who before the end of the century had almost a monopoly of
the glass trade in those parts: they even established subsidiary works
beyond the frontier in such places as Verdun. They were one of the
first on the Continent to see the importance of the new English
flint-glass; at all events it is recorded that as early as 1680 they
made flint-glass _à l’Anglaise_,[177] and were thus able to withstand
the Bohemian[178] competition which at that time was carrying
everything before it.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Bohemian engraved glass
was copied in both the Walloon and Flemish parts of what is now
Belgium. Indeed when the latter district fell under Austrian rule early
in the eighteenth century, there was naturally a tendency to encourage
Bohemian methods of decoration. Specimens of this engraved glass may be
seen in the museums of many Belgian towns, but I have seen nothing to
equal, in spirit and high finish, the contemporary engraved glass of
the United Provinces. As for the earlier _cristallo_ made at Antwerp,
say from 1550 to 1650, the difficulty is to distinguish, in the case of
the specimens that have survived, the local work from that imported
from Venice, and we have evidence that even at the time the native
experts could not always do so.[179]
I must in conclusion just say one word about a source of information
for the sixteenth and seventeenth century glass of the Low Countries
which is for the most part wanting in the case of other countries. We
have seen how little can be learned from the works of contemporary
Venetian painters, of the famous glass of Murano (p. 202). But in the
north it is quite otherwise; not only in the pictures of the still-life
painters, but in _genre_ scenes, and sometimes even in paintings of a
devotional character, we meet with carefully drawn examples of glass.
It thus happens that the works of the Flemish and Dutch painters of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throw a great deal of light upon
the kinds of glass to be found both in the village alehouses and on the
buffets of the wealthy. We can take note of the competition of the old
heavy Teutonic forms with the Italian _cristallo_, a competition which
continued in force during all this period.
It is, however, from a work of the Cologne school, from a picture of
the early sixteenth century, now in the Louvre, representing the Last
Supper,[180] that I will take my first example. Here on the table we
see a decanter with tall neck, delicately gadrooned, of distinctly
Venetian type. The drinking-glasses also are apparently of _cristallo_
of the well-known fifteenth-century form, without stem or knop. The cup
of Christ alone has a cover. But there are also on the table several
cups or beakers of a deep green glass, studded with small
bosses—‘prunted’ glass, in fact, of a pure Teutonic type.
These two families of glass may be traced, often side by side, in much
later works—in the pictures of the Flemish and Dutch schools of the
seventeenth century. In the paintings of the former school, however, a
clear white glass soon becomes prevalent even in humble surroundings.
In the _cabaret_ scenes of Teniers, the peasant drinks his beer from a
tall hexagonal glass of thick whitish metal. The wine is kept in
spherical long-necked flasks—a very old type which we have often met
with in our history—a plug of rolled paper taking the place of a cork;
it is drunk from wide-mouthed conical glasses of thin white metal.
Similar glasses appear indeed in the pictures of the Dutch painters (as
in more than one painting by Metsu and De Hooghe in the National
Gallery). But in Holland, in the seventeenth century, the dark green or
almost black prunted goblets of _roemer_ type were apparently held in
even greater estimation. In the famous terrace scene of Jan Steen
(National Gallery, No. 1421), the wine, which is kept in a large
pear-shaped glass vessel with a stopper of wood, is drunk from a small
graceful _roemer_. In J. van de Velde’s still-life in the same
collection (No. 1255) we see again a magnificent _roemer_, of very dark
glass, with prunted stem and threaded foot, half filled with Rhenish
wine.[181] But if we turn again to the Flemish painters of this later
time, we find that when in rich interiors they introduce specimens of
glass among other _objets de vertu_, this glass is always of a Venetian
type. There is one such painter, a follower of Jan Brueghel apparently,
who loves to introduce among a wealth of plate and jewellery, piled on
tables and shelves and even on the floor, the most elaborate specimens
of the fine _cristallo_ of Venice, proving in what esteem this glass
was then held in the Spanish Netherlands. I might give many further
examples, but enough has been said to show that as in the case of
porcelain, of fayence and of plate, so for the history of glass, a mine
of information may be found in the _genre_ and other pictures of the
Netherlandish school.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVI_
SPANISH GLASS
SEVENTEENTH OR EIGHTEENTH CENTURY]
SPANISH GLASS
In the case of France we have seen how vast is the amount of
documentary evidence concerning the glass of the renaissance, and how
comparatively scanty on the other hand the in every way more
satisfactory evidence to be drawn from the examination of existing
specimens. Now in the case of Spanish glass these conditions are in
some measure reversed. We here find the documentary evidence almost
entirely wanting, but we in England, at any rate, have in the British
Museum, and more especially at South Kensington, fairly extensive
collections of glass from the Peninsula. I will not say that most of
the examples are of any great artistic, still less of technical merit.
Far too many pieces in the latter collection are but sorry imitations
of debased French and English models of the eighteenth century, and
even later times. But as we shall see, not a few types, earlier in
style if not in actual date, may be distinguished, and these have a
distinct local flavour.
This is the case above all with a class of rudely executed vessels that
are found in the south of Spain—in Murcia, Andalucia, and Granada. The
metal itself is of a primitive type, of various shades of green and
bluish-green. Indeed, one of the points of interest in this South
Spanish glass is to be found in the fact that it is essentially a glass
of the people: it is a survival from mediæval times, and it thus throws
light upon the long extinct _verre de fougère_ or _wald-glas_ that was
made all over the west of Europe before the introduction of the
Venetian _cristallo_. Not that this Spanish glass is necessarily of the
inland or potash family; we are here in a Mediterranean country, and
the alkali has probably been found in the native soda-holding barilla.
The shapes taken by this rude glass of the south of Spain often
resemble those found in the local pottery; one is reminded at times of
the graceful water-jars that are indeed common to nearly all the
Mediterranean coast. A Moorish origin has been found for some of these
forms, but we may perhaps go further back and call them Byzantine. The
most characteristic shape is a vase with spherical body and with a tall
expanding neck in the form of a truncated cone; neck and body are
united by a series of handles, often eight or more in number (Plate
XXXVI.). Now not only these handles, with their upper and lower
attachments worked while hot by the pincers into toothed and crested
forms, but the whole of the _appliqué_ ornaments of the vessel—the
threadings and the rude floral reliefs—take one back to a very old
plan of decoration. This was a style much in favour in later Roman
times—it is one that is perhaps _per se_ the most characteristic and
natural of all methods of treating the surface of glass. A similar
many-handled vase is a common type among the peasant pottery of the
same districts of Southern Spain; on this we find the same ring of
handles, while the _appliqué_ threadings and rosettes of the glass are
replaced by a similarly applied slip ornament. This pottery is still
manufactured for local use, but I do not know whether any of the rude
green glass is produced at the present day.
We have little or no information about the glass made in Spain during
the Moorish domination. There is a vague tradition that the manufacture
was carried on in Murcia and Andalucia, and Al Makari, the historian,
states on the authority of an author of the thirteenth century, that
Almeria was famous for its vessels of glass as well as for those of
iron and copper.[182]
It is the district lying inland, some distance to the north of Almeria,
that has long, probably from Moorish times, been the centre of the
glass industry of the south of Spain;—this is especially true of Pinar
de la Vidriera and of Castril de la Peña. At this latter town, Don Juan
Riaño tells us, glass has been made from time without memory, and
indeed is still made there. ‘A gallery one mile long which exists at
the entry of the town from which sand has been extracted for this
manufacture, gives an idea of the antiquity of this industry’
(_Industrial Arts of Spain_, p. 232).
There is only one other centre of the manufacture of glass in Spain
that need detain us. This lies in the coast district of Catalonia,
above all around Barcelona; for this town we have direct evidence of
the manufacture as far back as the early part of the fourteenth
century.[183] At this time the Catalan mariners were the boldest and
the most skilful in the whole Mediterranean, and active rivals of the
Venetians in the ports of the Levant. Now there is one variety of
enamelled glass formerly attributed to Venice, which, as is at present
generally acknowledged, has its origin in the Peninsula: much of it was
made at Barcelona. The prevailing note of the enamel on this glass is a
very beautiful apple-green, of two tints, one passing into yellow. This
colour is sometimes found alone, at others associated with a few
touches of other enamels—a lavender blue, for instance, but these
other colours are of no great brilliancy. The green much resembles that
found on the enamelled glass of the Saracens, where, however, this
colour was always sparingly applied. The patterns on the Catalan glass
are generally of a formal floral character, often built up of sprigs
radiating from a centre. But technically the most noticeable point in
this enamel is the method of its application. As in the case of the
Saracenic glass, it is laid on with a loaded brush; it lies in thick
semi-transparent masses on the surface. As a result we have a rich and
jewel-like effect that we may look for in vain in the flat opaque
painting that we see on so many European wares. There are several
pieces of this glass in the British Museum, but the most beautiful
example that I have seen is in the Museo Civico at Venice. This is a
little flask lately acquired from the Maglione collection at Naples;
the dominant green enamel is here relieved by some yellowish foliage
and by red and white birds.
I do not think that any existing example of this green enamelled glass
could be safely referred to an earlier date than the end of the
fifteenth century. But it is not improbable that the Catalans learned
the use of these enamels not from the Venetians, but directly from
Saracenic or Jewish glass-workers in some of the ports of the Levant.
Such a distant source for this decoration, which is indeed somewhat
Oriental in character, I think more probable than a local one in Spain,
for we have no evidence that the Moors, when they held the Peninsula,
ever practised the art of enamelling glass, nor indeed were the
Catalans, after very early times, ever brought much into contact with
their Mohammedan neighbours: their main dealings were with the Levant.
That the glass of Barcelona was widely known and held in some repute
before the end of the fifteenth century, the following notices go far
to prove. As early as 1491—so it is stated in a contemporary Latin
manuscript—glass vessels of various shapes, resembling those made at
Venice, were exported to Rome from Barcelona. Again, when Philippe le
Beau passed through the latter town in 1503, we are told that he went
‘_en dehors de la ville veoire ung four ou faict voires de cristallin
très beaus_’ (Schuermans, _Bulletin_ xxix. p. 138 _seq._). Finally,
Ferdinand of Aragon, about the same time, is reported to have sent to
Queen Isabella a present of 274 pieces of glass manufactured in
Barcelona. That this glass must have been possessed of some artistic
merit we may infer from the fact that the Queen presented several
pieces to the Capella de los Reyes at Granada. These we may perhaps
identify with the _vasi di vedro_ seen among the treasures of this
chapel a few years later by the Venetian ambassador (Andrea Navagero,
_Viaggio in Spagna et in Francia_). M. Gerspach, I may add, calls
attention to an inventory drawn up during the reign of Philip II., in
which, under the heading of _bidrios de Barcelona_, 119 pieces of glass
of various forms are catalogued; among other things—and this is a
point of great interest—mention is made of some enamelled lamps.
At a much later date, not before the eighteenth century probably, a
good deal of opaque white glass, in imitation of porcelain, was made at
Barcelona. At South Kensington may be seen a series of quadrangular
flasks of this material with bevelled edges, about six inches in
height. These flasks—they probably served to hold essences and
spirits—are somewhat rudely painted with floral designs in bright
primitive colours—red, blue, and yellow. Both in India and Persia we
come across examples of glass decorated with ‘painted’ enamels, almost
identical in shape and size with these Spanish bottles. Not only these,
but some of the sherbet-jugs and coffee-cups of this milky glass, that
are still often found in many parts of the East, may well have come
from this district. It will be remembered, however, that a very similar
ware was made about the same time both in France and at Venice.
Other towns in Catalonia, as Cervelló, Almatret, and above all Mataró,
became famous for their glass in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. There is more than one record of distinguished foreign
princes who were conducted in royal galleys to visit the glass-works of
this last town.
M. Schuermans has discovered the names of more than twenty Italians
from L’Altare or from Venice, who found their way to Spain, in some
cases by way of Flanders. At Lisbon, too, in the seventeenth century,
there were many foreign glass-makers, Muranese, Altarists, and Flemings.
At Cadalso, in the province of Toledo, glass-furnaces were at work as
early as the beginning of the sixteenth century; indeed they are said
at that time to have supplied the whole kingdom of Castile. At these
works, at a somewhat later time, the Italian influence became very
strong, and no doubt many Muranese or Altarists were employed.
Before the end of the seventeenth century, the general decline so
noticeable in all the industries of Spain spread, it would seem, to the
glass-works. Workmen were now obtained chiefly from the Low Countries,
and in addition much glass was imported by sea from Antwerp. To how low
a state the glass industry had fallen at this time may be inferred from
the fact that orders for ‘Mexico and the Indies’ had to be executed
abroad. In the next century, when Spain had lost her Flemish
possessions, their place as a source of glass-ware was taken by France.
Philip V., about the year 1720, founded a royal glass manufactory near
his summer palace of La Granja de S. Ildefonso, and workmen were
gathered together from all sources—there were Germans and Swedes as
well as Frenchmen. These works were above all established, in rivalry
to St. Gobain (p. 235), for the preparation of large mirrors of
plate-glass, but all sorts of ‘hollow ware’ were also produced there.
This later Spanish glass, made to royal order, is, however, utterly
devoid of any interest, and it need not detain us.