Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages Part 8

No two sentiments could be better calculated to keep a conqueror from undue excesses.

Mercia was a headquarters for steel and other metals in the thirteenth century. Seville was even then famous for its steel, also, and in the words of a contemporary writer, "the steel which is made in Seville is most excellent; it would take too much time to enumerate the delicate objects of every kind which are made in this town." King Don Pedro, in his will, in the fourteenth century, bequeathes to his son, his "Castilian sword, which I had made here in Seville, ornamented with stones and gold." Swords were baptized; they were named, and seemed to have a veritable personality of their own. The sword of Charlemagne was christened "Joyeuse," while we all know of Arthur's Excalibur; Roland's sword was called Durandel. Saragossa steel was esteemed for helmets, and the sword of James of Arragon in 1230, "a very good sword, and lucky to those who handled it," was from Monzon. The Cid's sword was similar, and named Tizona. There is a story of a Jew who went to the grave of the Cid to steal his sword, which, according to custom, was interred with the owner: the corpse is said to have resented the intrusion by unsheathing the weapon, which miracle so amazed the Jew that he turned Christian!

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOORISH SWORD]

German armour was popular. Cologne swords were great favourites in England. King Arthur's sword was one of these,--

"For all of Coleyne was the blade And all the hilt of precious stone."

In the British Museum is a wonderful example of a wooden shield, painted on a gesso ground, the subject being a Knight kneeling before a lady, and the motto: "Vous ou la mort." These wooden shields were used in Germany until the end of Maximilian's reign.

The helmet, or Heaume, entirely concealed the face, so that for purposes of identification, heraldic badges and shields were displayed.

Later, crests were also used on the helmets, for the same purpose.

Certain armourers were very well known in their day, and were as famous as artists in other branches. William Austin made a superb suit for the Earl of Warwick, while Thomas Stevyns was the coppersmith who worked on the same, and Bartholomew Lambspring was the polisher.

There was a famous master-armourer at Greenwich in the days of Elizabeth, named Jacob: some important arms of that period bear the inscription, "Made by me Jacob." There is some question whether he was the same man as Jacob Topf who came from Innsbruck, and became court armourer in England in 1575. Another famous smith was William Pickering, who made exquisitely ornate suits of what we might call full-dress armour.

Colossal cannon were made: two celebrated guns may be seen, the monster at Ghent, called Mad Meg, and the huge cannon at Edinburgh Castle, Mons Meg, dating from 1476. These guns are composed of steel coils or spirals, afterwards welded into a solid ma.s.s instead of being cast. They are mammoth examples of the art of the blacksmith and the forge. In Germany cannon were made of bronze, and these were simply cast.

Cross bows obtained great favour in Spain, even after the arquebuse had come into use. It was considered a safer weapon to the one who used it. An old writer in 1644 remarks, "It has never been known that a man's life has been lost by breaking the string or cord, two things which are dangerous, but not to a considerable extent,"... and he goes on "once set, its shot is secure, which is not the case with the arquebus, which often misses fire." There is a letter from Amba.s.sador Salimas to the King of Hungary, in which he says: "I went to Balbastro and there occupied myself in making a pair of cross bows for your Majesty. I believe they will satisfy the desires which were required... as your Majesty is annoyed when they do not go off as you wish." It would seem as though his Majesty's "annoyance" was justifiable; imagine any one dependent upon the shot of a cross bow, and then having the weapon fail to "go off!" Nothing could be more discouraging.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENAMELLED SUIT OF ARMOUR]

There is a contemporary treatise which is full of interest, ent.i.tled, "How a Man shall be Armed at his ease when he shall Fight on Foot." It certainly was a good deal of a contract to render a knight comfortable in spite of the fact that he could see or breathe only imperfectly, and was weighted down by iron at every point. This complete covering with metal added much to the actual noise of battle. Froissart alludes to the fact that in the battle of Rosebeque, in 1382, the hammering on the helmets made a noise which was equal to that of all the armourers of Paris and Brussels working together. And yet the strength needed to sport such accoutrements seems to have been supplied. Leon Alberti of Florence, when clad in a full suit of armour, could spring with ease upon a galloping horse, and it is related that Aldobrandini, even with his right arm disabled, could cleave straight through his opponent's helmet and head, down to the collar bone, with a single stroke!

One of the richest suits of armour in the world is to be seen at Windsor; it is of Italian workmanship, and is made of steel, blued and gilded, with wonderfully minute decorations of damascene and applique work. This most ornate armour was made chiefly for show, and not for the field: for knights to appear in their official capacity, and for jousting at tournaments, which were practically social events. In the days of Henry VIII. a chronicler tells of a jouster who "tourneyed in harneyse all of gilt from the head piece to the sabattons." Many had "ta.s.sels of fine gold" on their suits.

Italian weapons called "lasquenets" were very deadly. In a letter from Albrecht Durer to Pirckheimer, he alludes to them, as having "roncions with two hundred and eighteen points: and if they pink a man with any of these, the man is dead, as they are all poisoned."

Bronze is composed of copper with an alloy of about eight or ten per cent. of tin. The fusing of these two metals produces the brown glossy substance called bronze, which is so different from either of them. The art of the bronze caster is a very old and interesting one.

The method of proceeding has varied very little with the centuries. A statue to be cast either in silver or bronze would be treated in the following manner.

A general semblance of the finished work was first set up in clay; then over this a layer of wax was laid, as thick as the final bronze was intended to be. The wax was then worked with tools and by hand until it took on the exact form designed for the finished product.

Then a crust of clay was laid over the wax; on this were added other coatings of clay, until quite a thick sh.e.l.l of clay surrounded the wax. The whole was then subjected to fervent heat, and the wax all melted out, leaving a s.p.a.ce between the core and the outer sh.e.l.l. Into this s.p.a.ce the liquid bronze was poured, and after it had cooled and hardened the outer sh.e.l.l was broken off, leaving the statue in bronze exactly as the wax had been.

Cellini relates an experience in Paris, with an old man eighty years of age, one of the most famous bronze casters whom he had engaged to a.s.sist him in his work for Francis I. Something went wrong with the furnace, and the poor old man was so upset and "got into such a stew" that he fell upon the floor, and Benvenuto picked him up fancying him to be dead: "Howbeit," explains Cellini, "I had a great beaker of the choicest wine brought him,... I mixed a large b.u.mper of wine for the old man, who was groaning away like anything, and I bade him most winning-wise to drink, and said: 'Drink, my father, for in yonder furnace has entered in a devil, who is making all this mischief, and, look you, we'll just let him bide there a couple of days, till he gets jolly well bored, and then will you and I together in the s.p.a.ce of three hours firing, make this metal run, like so much batter, and without any exertion at all.' The old fellow drank and then I brought him some little dainties to eat: meat pasties they were, nicely peppered, and I made him take down four full goblets of wine. He was a man quite out of the ordinary, this, and a most lovable old thing, and what with my caresses and the virtue of the wine, I found him soon moaning away as much with joy as he had moaned before with grief." Cellini displayed in this incident his belief in the great principle that the artist should find pleasure in his work in order to impart to that work a really satisfactory quality, and did exactly the right thing at the right minute; instead of trusting to a faltering effort in a disheartened man, he cheered the old bronze founder up to such a pitch that after a day or two the work was completed with triumph and joy to both.

In the famous statue of Perseus, Cellini experienced much difficulty in keeping the metal liquid. The account of this thrilling experience, told in his matchless autobiography, is too long to quote at this point; an interesting item, however, should be noted. Cellini used pewter as a solvent in the bronze which had hardened in the furnace.

"Apprehending that the cause of it was, that the fusibility of the metal was impaired, by the violence of the fire," he says, "I ordered all my dishes and porringers, which were in number about two hundred, to be placed one by one before my tubes, and part of them to be thrown into the furnace, upon which all present perceived that my bronze was completely dissolved, and that my mould was filling," and, such was the relief that even the loss of the entire pewter service of the family was sustained with equanimity; the family, "without delay, procured earthen vessels to supply the place of the pewter dishes and porringers, and we all dined together very cheerfully." Edgec.u.mb Staley, in the "Guilds of Florence," speaks of the "pewter fattened Perseus:" this is worthy of Carlyle.

Early Britons cast statues in bra.s.s. Speed tells of King Cadwollo, who died in 677, being buried "at St. Martin's church near Ludgate, his image great and terrible, triumphantly riding on horseback, artificially cast in bra.s.s, was placed on the Western gate of the city, to the further fear and terror of the Saxons!"

In 1562 Bartolomeo Morel, who made the celebrated statue of the Giralda Tower in Seville, executed a fifteen branched candelabrum for the Cathedral. It is a rich Renaissance design, in remarkably chaste and good lines, and holds fifteen statuettes, which are displaced to make room for the candles only during the last few days of Lent.

A curious form of mediaeval trinket was the perfume ball; this consisted of a perforated ball of copper or bra.s.s, often ornamented with damascene, and intended to contain incense to perfume the air, the b.a.l.l.s being suspended.

The earliest metal statuary in England was rendered in latten, a mixed metal of a yellow colour, the exact recipe for which has not survived. The rec.u.mbent effigies of Henry III. and Queen Eleanor are made of latten, and the tomb of the Black Prince in Canterbury is the same, beautifully chased. Many of these and other tombs were probably originally covered with gilding, painting, and enamel.

The effigies of Richard II. and his queen, Anne of Bohemia, were made during the reign of the monarch; a contemporary doc.u.ment states that "Sir John Innocent paid another part of a certain indenture made between the King and Nicolas Broker and Geoffrey Prest, coppersmiths of London, for the making of two images, likenesses of the King and Queen, of copper and latten, gilded upon the said marble tomb."

There are many examples of bronze gates in ecclesiastical architecture. The gates of St. Paolo Fuori le Mura in Rome were made in 1070, in Constantinople, by Stauracius the Founder. Many authorities think that those at St. Mark's in Venice were similarly produced. The bronze doors in Rome are composed of fifty-four small designs, not in relief, but with the outlines of the subjects inlaid with silver. The doors are in Byzantine taste.

The bronze doors at Hildesheim differ from nearly all other such portals, in the elemental principle of design. Instead of being divided into small panels, they are simply blocked off into seven long horizontal compartments on each side, and then filled with a pictorial arrangement of separate figures; only three or four in each panel, widely s.p.a.ced, and on a background of very low relief.

The figures are applied, at scattered distances apart, and are in unusually high modelling, in some cases being almost detached from the door. The effect is curious and interesting rather than strictly beautiful, on the whole; but in detail many of the figures display rare power of plastic skill, proportion, and action. They are, at any rate, very individual: there are no other doors at all like them. They are the work of Bishop Bernward.

Unquestionably, one of the greatest achievements in bronze of any age is the pair of gates by Lorenzo Ghiberti on the Baptistery in Florence. Twenty-one years were devoted to their making, by Ghiberti and his a.s.sistants, with the stipulation that all figures in the design were to be personal work of the master, the a.s.sistants only attending to secondary details. The doors were in place in April, 1424.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRUNELLESCHI'S COMPEt.i.tIVE PANEL]

The compet.i.tion for the Baptistery doors reads like a romance, and is familiar to most people who know anything of historic art.

When the young Ghiberti heard that the compet.i.tion was open to all, he determined to go to Florence and work for the prize; in his own words: "When my friends wrote to me that the governors of the Baptistery were sending for masters whose skill in bronze working they wished to prove, and that from all Italian lands many maestri were coming, to place themselves in this strife of talent, I could no longer forbear, and asked leave of Sig. Malatesta, who let me depart." The result of the compet.i.tion is also given in Ghiberti's words: "The palm of victory was conceded to me by all judges, and by those who competed with me. Universally all the glory was given to me without any exception."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GHIBERTI'S COMPEt.i.tIVE PANEL]

Symonds considers the first gate a supreme accomplishment in bronze casting, but criticizes the other, and usually more admired gate, as "overstepping the limits that separate sculpture from painting," by "ma.s.sing together figures in mult.i.tudes at three and sometimes four distances. He tried to make a place in bas-relief for perspective."

Sir Joshua Reynolds finds fault with Ghiberti, also, for working at variance with the severity of sculptural treatment, by distributing small figures in a s.p.a.cious landscape framework. It was not really in accordance with the limitations of his material to treat a bronze casting as Ghiberti treated it, and his example has led many men of inferior genius astray, although there is no use in denying that Ghiberti himself was clever enough to defy the usual standards and rules.

Fonts were sometimes made in bronze. There is such a one at Liege cast by Lambert Patras, which stands upon twelve oxen. It is decorated with reliefs from the Gospels. This artist, Patras, was a native of Dinant, and lived in the twelfth century. The bronze font in Hildesheim is among the most interesting late Romanesque examples in Germany. It is a large deep basin entirely covered with enrichment of Scriptural scenes, and is supported by four kneeling figures, typical of the four Rivers of Paradise. The conical cover is also covered with Scriptural scenes, and surmounted by a foliate k.n.o.b.

Among the figures with which the font is covered are the Cardinal Virtues, flanked by their patron saints. Didron considers this a most important piece of bronze from an iconographic point of view theologically and poetically. The archaic qualities of the figures are fascinating and sometimes diverting. In the scene of the Baptism of Christ the water is positively trained to flow upwards in pyramidal form, in order to reach nearly to the waist, while at either side it recedes to the ground level again,--it has an ingenuous and almost startling suddenness in the rising of its flood! An interesting comment upon the prevalence of early national forms may be deduced, when one observes that on the table, at the Last Supper, there lies a perfectly shaped pretzel!

The great bronze column constructed by St. Bernward at Hildesheim has the Life of Christ represented in consecutive scenes in a spiral form, like those ornamenting the column of Trajan. Down by Bernward's grave there is a spring which is said to cure cripples and rheumatics.

Peasants visit Hildesheim on saints' days in order to drink of it, and frequently, after one of these visitations, crutches are found abandoned near by.

Saxony was famous for its bronze founders, and work was sent forth, from this country, in the twelfth century, all over Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FONT AT HILDESHEIM, 12TH CENTURY]

Orcagna's tabernacle at Or San Michele is, as Symonds has expressed it, "a monumental jewel," and "an epitome of the minor arts of mediaeval Italy." On it one sees bas-relief carving, intaglios, statuettes, mosaic, the lapidary's art in agate; enamels, and gilded gla.s.s, and yet all in good taste and harmony. The sculpture is properly subordinated to the architectonic principle, and one can understand how it is not only the work of a goldsmith, but of a painter.

Of all bronze workers, perhaps Peter Vischer is the best known and is certainly one of the best deserving of his wide fame. Peter Vischer was born about the same time as Quentin Matsys, between 1460 and 1470. He was the most important metal worker in Germany.

He and Adam Kraft, of whom mention will be made when we come to deal with sculptural carving, were brought up together as boys, and "when older boys, went with one another on all holidays, acting still as though they were apprentices together." Vischer's normal expression was in Gothic form. His first design for the wonderful shrine of St. Sebald in Nuremberg was made by him in 1488, and is still preserved in Vienna. It is a pure late-Gothic canopy, and I cannot help regretting that the execution was delayed until popular taste demanded more concession towards the Renaissance, and it was resolved in 1507, "to have the Shrine of St. Sebald made of bra.s.s."

Therefore, although the general lines continue to hold a Gothic semblance, the shrine has many Renaissance features. Regret, however, is almost morbid, in relation to such a perfect work of art. Italian feeling is evident throughout, and the wealth of detail in figures and foliate forms is magnificent. The centre of interest is the little portrait statuette of Peter Vischer himself, according to his biographer, "as he looked, and as he daily went about and worked in the foundry." Though Peter had not been to Italy himself, his son Hermann had visited the historic land, and had brought home "artistic things that he sketched and drew, which delighted his old father, and were of great use to his brothers." Peter Vischer had three sons, who all followed him in the craft. His workshop must have been an ideal inst.i.tution in its line.

Some remnants of Gothic grotesque fancy are to be seen on the shrine, although treated outwardly with Renaissance feeling. A realistic life-sized mouse may be seen in one place, just as if it had run out to inspect the work; and the numbers of little tipsy "putti"

who disport themselves in all att.i.tudes, in perilous positions on narrow ledges, are full of merry humour.

The metal of St. Sebald's shrine is left as it came from the casting, and owes much of its charm to the lack of filing, polishing, and pointing usual in such monuments. The molten living expression is retained. Only the details and spirit of the figures are Renaissance; the Gothic plan is hardly disturbed, and the whole monument is pleasing in proportion. The figures are exquisite, especially that of St. Peter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT STATUETTE OF PETER VISCHER]

A great Renaissance work in Germany was the grille of the Rathaus made for Nuremberg by Peter Vischer the Younger. It was of bronze, the symmetrical diapered form of the open work part being supported by chaste and dignified columns of the Corinthian order. It was first designed by Peter Vischer the Elder, and revised and changed by the whole family after Hermann's return from Rome with his Renaissance notions. It was sold in 1806 to a merchant for old metal; later it was traced to the south of France, where it disappeared.

Another famous bronze of Nuremberg is the well-known "Goose Man"

fountain, by Labenwolf. Every traveller has seen the quaint half-foolish little man, as he stands there holding his two geese who politely turn away their heads in order to produce the streams of water!

With the best bronzes, and with steel used for decorative purposes, the original casting has frequently been only for general form, the whole of the surface finishing being done with a shaping tool, by hand, giving the appearance of a carving in bronze or steel. In j.a.panese bronzes this is particularly felt. The cla.s.sical bronzes were evidently perfect mosaics of different colours, in metal. Pliny tells of a bronze figure of a dying woman, who was represented as having changed colour at the extremities, the fusion of the different shades of bronze being disguised by anklets, bracelets, and a necklace! A curious and very disagreeable work of art, we should say. One sometimes sees in antique fragments ivory or silver eyeb.a.l.l.s, and hair and eyelashes made separately in thin strips and coils of metal; while occasionally the depression of the edge of the lips is sufficient to give rise to the opinion that a thin veneer of copper was applied to give colour.

The bronze effigies of Henry III. and Eleanor, at Westminster, were the work of a goldsmith, Master William Torel, and are therefore finer in quality and are in some respects superior to the average casting in bronze. Torel worked at the palace, and the statues were cast in "cire perdue" process, being executed in the churchyard itself. They are considered among the finest bronzes of the period extant. Gilding and enamel were often used in bronze effigies.