Page 148

ITALIAN ORNAMENT.
for since the delicate drauglitsmen and engravers of the day were much employed
by the goldsmiths
in working out their designs and patterns, it followed, as no unnatural consequence,
that many of
the forms peculiar to jewellers' work were introduced into decorations designed
for altogether different
purposes. This was especially the case in Germany, and more particularly
in Saxony, where a great
deal of a mixed style of Renaissance and bastard Italian, with strap and
ribbon-work, cartouches, and
intricate complications of architectural members, was executed for the Electors.
 The engraving we
present of a decoration composed by Theodore de Bry affords no bad illustration
of the way in which
motives expressly adapted for enamelling in the style of Cellini were thrown
together, to make up the
ordinary grotesque of the day.  It is by no means in the works of Theodore
de Bry alone that such
solecisms are to be found; for in the French etchings of Etienne de Laulne,
Gilles I'Egar6, and others,
the same features are presented.
Engravers and designers of this class were also much employed, both in Germany
and France, in
providing models for the damascene work, which was long popular in both these
countries, as well as
in Italy.
It is remarkable, that although we find that the Crusaders bought Oriental
arms at Damascus,
and sometimes brought the more elaborate articles to Europe, as in the case
of the "Vase de
Vincennes," no attempts should have been made to imitate the manufacture
until the middle of the
fifteenth century, when we find it in use in Italy for decorating the plate-armour,
which was then
adopted in that country.  It is most probable that the art was first introduced
by the great trading
cities, such as Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, from the East, and was afterwards
taken up as a more
permanent decoration for armour than parcel-gilding by the artists of Milan,
which city was then to
Europe what Damascus had been to the East, viz. the great emporium for the
best arms and armour.
So exclusively, indeed, was the art, in the first instance, employed upon
weapons, that to the very
last the Italian writers designate it under the title of "lavoro all'
azzimina."  At the beginning of
the sixteenth century the art began to be exercised out of Italy; and it
is by no means improbable
that it was taught to the workmen of France and Spain by those travelling
artists whom the good
taste, or possibly the vanity, of the kings of those countries attached to
their courts.  Probably the
finest existing specimen of damascening is the armour of Francis I., now
in the Cabinet de M6dailles,
at Paris. Both this and the shield in Her Majesty's possession at Windsor
have been attributed to
the famous Cellini; but on comparing them with any of his known works, the
drawing of the figures
indicates rather an Augsburg artist than the broad style which Cellini' had
acquired from his study
of the works of Michael Angelo.
From that time down to the middle of the seventeenth century a great number
of arms were
decorated with damascening, of which the Louvre, the Cabinet de Medailles,
and the Mus6e d'Artillerie,
contain numerous fine specimens; and the names of Michael Angelo, Negroli,
the Piccinini, and
Cursinet, may be mentioned as excelling in damascene work, as well as in
the art of the armourer
generally.
In our own country the process does not appear to have been much exercised;
parcel-gilding,
engraving, blacking, and russeting, being well received as substitutes; and
the few specimens we possess
were probably imported, or captured in our foreign wars, as in the case of
the splendid suits of armour
brought to England by the Earl of Pembroke after the battle of St. Quentin.
As it has been our pleasant task to record how French Ornamental Art was
regenerated by imitation
of Italian models in the sixteenth century, so it now becomes our less agreeable
duty to note how
deleterious an influence was exercised in the seventeenth from the same procedure.
There can be no
doubt that two highly-gifted, but overrated, Italian artists, set during
their lives upon pinnacles which
made them   the "observed of all observers," effected an immense
amount of mischief to French'
148