chapter VI

.

Footnote 229:

Cennini in his 67th chapter gives directions for preparing the mixed colour he calls verdaccio. It was a compound of white, dark ochre, black and red.

Footnote 230:

The principle of sgraffito-work, that is the scratching through a thin superimposed coat to bring to view an under layer of a different colour, seems to have been established first in pottery making, and in this connection the Italians called it ‘Sgraffiato.’ The adoption of the process for the decoration of surfaces of plaster or cement was an innovation of the Renaissance, and Vasari appears to have been the first writer who gives a recipe for it. According to his account in the _Lives_, it was a friend of Morto da Feltro, the Florentine Andrea di Cosimo, who first started the work, and Vasari describes the process he employed in phrases that correspond with the wording of the present chapter (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, V, 207). A modern expert describes the process as follows: ‘A wall is covered with a layer of tinted plaster, and on this is superimposed a thin coating of white plaster. The outer coat is scratched through, and the colour behind it is revealed. Then all the white surface outside the design is cut away, and a cameo-like effect given to the design. This is the art of Sgraffito as known to the Italian Renaissance’ (_Transactions_, _R.I.B.A._, 1889, p. 125). The process dropped out of use after a while, but was revived in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly through the agency of the architect Gottfried Semper, the author of _Der Stil_. It is sometimes used in our own country both on monumental and on domestic buildings, and as it is simple and cheap and permanent it is well fitted for modern use in our climate. The back of the Science School in Exhibition Road, S. Kensington, was covered with sgraffiti by the pupils of the late F. W. Moody about 1872. They would be the better now for a cleansing with the modern steam-blast.

Footnote 231:

See the Notes on ‘Enriched Façades,’ and ‘Stucco “Grotesques,”’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, pp. 298, 299.

Footnote 232:

This passage presents some difficulty. It runs ‘Dunque, quelle che vanno in campo bianco, non ci essendo il campo di stucco per non essere bianca la calce, si dà per tutto sottilmente il campo di bianco.’ Vasari seems to have in his mind the difference between ordinary plaster made, as he has just described, of ‘lime mixed with sand in the ordinary fashion,’ which would not be white, and what he calls ‘stucco,’ by which term is probably meant the finer plaster made of white lime from travertine and marble dust. Ordinary plaster has accordingly to be coated with white before the work begins.

Footnote 233:

Examples of this whimsical style of decoration are abundant in the Pompeian wall paintings, and the mind of Vitruvius was much exercised about their frivolity and want of meaning (_De Architectura_, VII, v).

Footnote 234:

Vasari is not very clear in his account of these methods of work, but it is enough to know that both by the ancients, and at the time of the Renaissance, colour was used largely in connection with these reliefs, and the combination could of course take several forms. In the loggia of the Villa Farnesina, where Raphael worked with his assistants, there are painted panels in fresco framed in mouldings of stucco, modelled plaster figures in white against a coloured ground, coloured stuccoes against coloured fields, and tinted bands separating the framed plaster medallions. The same kind of work is found in the Loggie of the Vatican, the Doria Palace at Genoa, and other localities innumerable. Plate XII shows a characteristic section of the decoration of the Vatican Loggie.

Footnote 235:

As in the work described at the close of ch. XII (the beginning of the present section).

Footnote 236:

The word ‘bolus’ is derived from the Greek βῶλος, a lump or clod, and means, according to Murray’s _Dictionary_, a pill, or a small rounded mass of any substance, and also a kind of reddish clay or earth, used medically for its astringent properties, that was brought from Armenia, and called by the pharmacologist ‘bole armeniac.’ Its use in the arts is due to its unctuous character, which made gold adhere to it. See below. In mediaeval illuminations a ‘bolus’ or small lump of a properly prepared gesso is generally laid on the parchment where gold is to come, so that the raised surface may give the polished metal more effect. The gold over the bolus was always burnished. It may be noticed that our word ‘size’ is really ‘assise,’ the bed or layer under gilding, for which a gluey substance was suitable.

Footnote 237:

A ‘mordant’ as the word implies is some corrosive liquid, such as is used by dyers to bite into the fabric and carry in with it the colouring matter. The word is also employed, as in this passage, for a glutinous size used as ground for gilding, such as the modern decorator’s ‘gold-size.’ Gold laid in this way has a ‘mat’ surface.

Footnote 238:

The scudo was worth in Tuscany about four-and-sixpence of our money. In Florence its value was a little greater.

Footnote 239:

See Note 1, ante, p. 248.

Footnote 240:

For the various processes of preparing a panel for painting and for gilding reference must be made to Cennini’s _Trattato_, where many technical matters are elucidated that Vasari passes over almost without notice. It must be remembered that Cennini writes as a tempera painter, while in Vasari’s time these elaborate processes were falling out of use. In his chapters 115–119, Cennini gives recipes for what he calls ‘gesso grosso’ and ‘gesso sottile.’ They are made of the same materials, ‘volterrano,’ or plaster from Volterra, which is a sulphate of lime corresponding to our ‘plaster of Paris,’ and size made from parchment shreds; but the plaster for ‘gesso sottile’ is more finely prepared. The plaster, produced by calcining gypsum, is first thoroughly slaked by being drenched with water till it loses all tendency to ‘set,’ and is then as a powder or paste mixed with the heated size. The size makes the composition dry quite hard, and Cennini speaks of its having a surface like ivory.

Footnote 241:

See Note 2, ante, p. 248.

Footnote 242:

This we should call ‘shell gold.’ It is in common use. The employment of the shell represents a very ancient tradition, for shells were the usual receptacles for pigments in late classical and Early Christian times.

Footnote 243:

This is excellent advice. The architectural character of mosaic decoration, the distance of the work from the eye, the nature of the technique and material, all invite to a broad and simple treatment, such as we find in the best mosaics at Ravenna and Rome. Modern work is often too elaborate and too minute in detail.

Footnote 244:

A modern would say that if the work be really inlaid, it should look like inlaid work, and not like something else. In the Italy of Vasari’s day however, as we have seen, painting had so thoroughly got the upper hand, that to ape the nobler art would seem a legitimate ambition for the mosaicist.

Footnote 245:

The durability of mosaic depends on the cement in which the cubes are embedded and on the care taken in their setting. The pieces themselves are indestructible but they will sometimes drop out from the wall. Hence extensive restorations have been carried out on the Early Christian mosaics at Ravenna and other places.

Footnote 246:

In his _Proemio delle Vite_ (_Opere_, I, 242) Vasari explains what he means by the words ‘antique’ and ‘old.’ The former refers to the so-called ‘classical’ epoch before Constantine; the latter to the Early Christian and early mediaeval period, prior to the Italian revival of the thirteenth century.

Footnote 247:

At S. Costanza (see Note 5, ante, p. 27) on the vault of the aisle there are decorative mosaics of the time of Constantine showing vine scrolls issuing out of vases, and classical genii gathering the grapes. Birds are introduced among the tendrils.

Footnote 248:

The mosaics at Ravenna and S. Marco, Venice, are well known. In the Duomo at Pisa, in the apse, there still remains the Saviour in Glory between the Madonna and John the Baptist, designed by a certain Cimabue, and the only existing work which modern criticism would accept as from the hand of the traditional father of Florentine painting. It may however have been another painter nicknamed ‘Cimabue,’ who worked at Pisa early in the fourteenth century. The mosaics of the Tribune of the Baptistry at Florence were executed in 1225 by Jacobus, a monk of the Franciscan Order, and this fact is attested by an inscription in mosaic which forms part of the work.

Footnote 249:

This mosaic, called the ‘Navicella,’ represents the Gospel ship manned by Christ and the disciples, with Peter struggling in the waves. It has been so much restored that little if any of Giotto’s work remains in it. It was replaced in the seventeenth century, after some wanderings, in the porch of the present Basilica, but Vasari saw it of course in the porch of the old, or Constantinian, church, the entrance end of which was still standing in his day.

Footnote 250:

This mosaic was executed at the end of the fifteenth century by Domenico Ghirlandajo and his brother over the northern door of the nave of the cathedral of Florence. It is still _in situ_ but has been greatly restored. The date 1490 is introduced in the composition.

Footnote 251:

This corresponds with modern practice. The following is from a paper by Mr James C. Powell, who, as practical worker in glass, has been engaged with Sir W. B. Richmond in the decoration in mosaic of the vaults of St Paul’s. ‘The glass which is rendered opaque by the addition of oxide of tin, is coloured as required by one of the metallic oxides; this is melted in crucibles placed in the furnace, and when sufficiently fused is ladled out in small quantities on to a metal table, and pressed into circular cakes about eight inches in diameter and from three-eighths to half an inch in thickness; these are then cooled gradually in a kiln, and when cold are ready for cracking up into tesserae, which can be further subdivided as the mosaicist requires. It is the fractured surface that is used in mosaic generally, as that has a pleasanter surface and a greater richness of colour; the thickness of the cake, therefore, regulates the limit of the size of the tesserae, and the fractured surface gives that roughness of texture which is so valuable from an artistic point of view.’ (_Transactions_, _R.I.B.A._, 1893–4, p. 249).

Footnote 252:

This is a point attended to by the best modern workers in mosaic. Where gold backgrounds are used it is advisable to carry the gold into the figures by using it as Vasari suggests for the lights on the draperies. If this were not done the figures would be liable to tell as dull masses against the more brilliant ground. The use of gold backgrounds is specially Byzantine. The earlier mosaics at Rome and at Ravenna have backgrounds of blue generally of a dark shade, which is

## particularly fine at Ss. Cosma e Damiano at Rome and in the tomb of

Galla Placidia at Ravenna. The mosaics at S. Sophia at Constantinople of the sixth century had gold backgrounds, and this is the case also with all the later examples in Italy from the ninth and tenth centuries onwards. The finest displays of these varied fields of gold, now deep now lustrous of hue, are to be seen in S. Sophia, S. Marco at Venice, and the Cappella Palatina at Palermo.

Vasari’s account of the fabrication of the gilded tesserae required for this part of the work is quite clear and agrees with modern practice. The gold leaf is hermetically sealed between two sheets of glass by the fusion of a thin film over it. The technique of the ‘fondi d’ oro,’ or glass vessels adorned with designs in gold, found in the Roman catacombs, was of the same nature.

Footnote 253:

It has been noticed at some places, as at Torcello, that before the cubes were laid in the soft cement the whole design was washed in in colour on the surface of the cement. This facilitated correct setting and avoided any appearance of white cement squeezed up in the interstices between the cubes. On this particular feature of the mosaic technique Berger has founded an ingenious theory of the origin of painting in fresco. It is his thesis, in his _Beiträge zur Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Maltechnik_, I, München, 1904, that the ancients did not employ the fresco process, but that this was evolved in early mediaeval days out of the mosaic technique as seen, _e.g._, at Torcello. The stucco, that Vasari describes, must be put on portion by portion, for it only keeps soft two or three days, and can only be used for setting the cubes while in a moist state. Now, Berger contends, if the design for the mosaic be painted in colours on the wet stucco, and the whole allowed to dry, without any use of the mosaic cubes, we should have a painting in fresco, and he imagines that fresco painting began in this way. Unfortunately for the theory, (1), the testimony of Vitruvius and Pliny is absolutely decisive in favour of the knowledge in antiquity of the fresco technique, and, (2), the use of the coloured painting on the stucco as a guide for the setting of the cubes was not normal, and can never have been used so freely as to give rise to a new technique of painting. As a fact, this colouring of the stucco is objected to by the best modern workers on aesthetic grounds, for they point out that the lines of grey cement between the coloured cubes answer to the lead lines in the stained glass window, and should be reckoned with by the designer as part of his artistic effect. No doubt the older mosaicists, like the workers in stained glass, instinctively apprehended this, and had no desire for the coloured cement.

Footnote 254:

One would expect here ‘lime of travertine,’ for what Vasari must mean is lime prepared by burning this stone, which he recommends elsewhere, _e.g._ ‘Architettura,’ cap. iv, and ‘Scultura,’ cap. vi (calce di trevertino). The cement here given is a lime cement mixed with water. A sort of putty mixed with boiled oil is also employed, and is said to have been introduced by Girolamo Muziano of Brescia, a contemporary of Vasari. Each mosaic worker seems to have his own special recipe for this compound.

Footnote 255:

The process described by Vasari of building up the mosaic _in situ_, tessera by tessera, according to the design pounced portion by portion on the soft cement, is the most direct and by far the most artistic, and was employed for all the fine mosaics of olden time. In modern days labour-saving appliances have been tried, though it is satisfactory to know that they are all again discarded in the best work of to-day, such as that of Sir W. B. Richmond in St. Paul’s. One of the methods referred to, which can be carried out in the studio, is to take a reversed tracing of the design, covered with gum, and place the cubes face downwards upon it according to the colour scheme. When they are all in position, as far as can be judged when working from the back, a coating of cement is laid over them and they are thus fixed in their places. The whole sheet is then lifted up and cemented in its proper place on the wall, the drawing to which the faces of the cubes are gummed being afterwards removed by wetting. A better plan than this is called by the Italians ‘Mosaico a rivoltatura.’ For this process the tesserae are laid, face upwards, in a bed of pozzolana, slightly damp, which forms a temporary joint between the adjacent cubes. Coarse canvas is pasted over the face of the work; it is lifted up, and the pozzolana brushed out of the interstices. The whole is then applied to the wall surface and pressed into the cement with which this has been coated. When the cement has set the canvas is removed from the face.

Footnote 256:

The Duomo of Siena is a veritable museum of floor decorations in incised outlines and in black and white, in the various processes described by Vasari. There is a good notice of them in Labarte, _Histoire des Arts Industriels_. None of the work is as early as the time of Duccio, but Beccafumi executed a large amount of it. See the Life of that artist by Vasari.

It is worthy of notice that Dante had something of this kind in his thoughts, when in the 12th Canto of the _Purgatorio_ he describes the figure designs on the ground of the first circle of Purgatory.

‘So saw I there ... ... with figures covered Whate’er of pathway from the mount projects.

· · · · ·

O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced, Between thy seven and seven children slain! O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew!

· · · · ·

Whoe’er of pencil master was or stile, That could portray the shades and traits which there Would cause each subtle genius to admire? Dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive; Better than I saw not who saw the truth, All that I trod upon while bowed I went.’ Longfellow’s Translation.

Footnote 257:

See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ ante, p. 119.

Footnote 258:

The Appartamento Borgia still contains a good display of these variegated tiles; the original ones are however rather the worse for wear. In the Life of Raphael, Vasari says they were supplied by the della Robbia of Florence. In the Castle of S. Angelo there is a collection of interesting specimens of the tiles Vasari goes on to mention. They are in cases in the Sala della Giustizia, and exhibit the devices of Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, Paul III, and other Popes. The pavement of the Laurentian Library at Florence is laid with tiles showing a very effective design of yellow upon red. They are ascribed to Tribolo.

Footnote 259:

Was this the road from Seravezza seawards which Michelangelo had begun? See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ ante, p. 119. Specimens of these Stazzema breccias are shown as C, D, on the Frontispiece.

Footnote 260:

Lat. _Evonymus Europaeus_. The only English example of the family is the spindle tree.

Footnote 261:

The Lemonnier editors say that this work is lost. Of course Vasari is speaking of the Old St. Peter’s, not the present structure.

Footnote 262:

Fra Damiano of Bergamo is mentioned by Vasari in his Life of Francesco Salviati (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, VII).

Footnote 263:

Inlays of different coloured woods, forming what is known as tarsia work, and sometimes as marqueterie, compose an easily understood kind of decoration that has been practised especially in the East from time immemorial. There is however a special interest attaching to this work in the Italy of the fifteenth century, in that it was connected with the studies in perspective that had so potent an influence on the general artistic progress of the time. For some reason that is not clearly apparent the designs for this work often took the form of buildings and city views in perspective, and artists amused themselves in working out in this form problems in that indispensable science. The history of the craft is so instructive that it is worth a special Note, which the reader will find at the end of this ‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 303.

Footnote 264:

‘The onyx marbles of Algeria, Mexico, and California (which are of the same nature as the Oriental alabasters) can be cut and ground sufficiently thin for window purposes’ (Mr W. Brindley in _Transactions_, _R.I.B.A._, 1887, p. 53). See also ante, p. 43.

Footnote 265:

The ‘occhi’ of Vasari correspond to the old-fashioned ‘bull’s-eyes’ which are still to be seen surviving in cottage windows. The ‘bull’s eye’ pane was the middle part of a sheet of so-called ‘crown’ glass where was attached the iron rod or tube with which the mass of molten glass was extracted from the furnace, before, by rotation of the rod, it was spread out into the form of a sheet. When the rod was ultimately detached a knob remained, and this part of the sheet was used for glazing as a cheap ‘waste product.’ In connection with the modern revival in domestic architecture, for which Mr Norman Shaw deserves a good deal of the credit, these rough panes have come again into fashion, and manufacturers make them specially and supply them at the price of an artistic luxury! In Vasari’s time they were evidently quite common, and we find numerous specimens represented in the pictures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The bedroom of S. Ursula in Carpaccio’s picture at Venice; the cell of S. Jerome in Dürer’s engraving; the room in which van Eyck paints Arnolfini and his wife, those in which Jost Amman’s ‘Handworkers’ are busy, etc., etc., have casements glazed in this fashion, the knob, called in English ‘bullion,’ in French ‘boudine,’ in German ‘Butzen,’ being distinctly represented as in relief.

Footnote 266:

The ‘telajo di legno’ is a window frame of wood such as we are familiar with in modern days, only in olden times these were often made detachable and taken about from place to place when lords and ladies changed their domicile. When Julius II wanted Bramante to fill some windows of the Vatican with coloured glass, it was found that the French ambassador to the Papal court had brought a painted window in such a frame from his own country, and the sight of this led to the invitation to Rome of French artists in this material. See _infra_, Note 5.

Footnote 267:

See Note on ‘The Stained Glass Window’ at the close of this ‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 308.

Footnote 268:

Vasari wrote the life of this artist, who had been his own teacher in early years at Arezzo (_Opere_, IV, 417). Gaye, _Carteggio_, II, 449, gives documentary evidence that he was the son of a certain Pierre de Marcillat, and was born at S. Michel in the diocese of Verdun in France. His name therefore has nothing to do with Marseilles, which moreover is not in a glass-painting locality, whereas Verdun, between France and Germany, is just in the region where the art was developed and flourished. Guglielmo and another Frenchman named Claude came to Rome about 1508 in the circumstances described in the foregoing Note, and made some windows for the Sala Regia of the Vatican and other parts of the Palace. These have all perished, but there still survive two windows from their hands in the choir of S. Maria del Popolo, on which are the name and arms of Pope Julius II. They are placed north and south behind and above the high altar, and have each three lights. They contain scenes from the lives of Christ and the Madonna, in which the figures are carefully drawn but the colour is patchy. Though the reds are clear and strong, there is a good deal of grey and the architectural backgrounds are rather muddy in hue. The artist was invited from Rome to Cortona and from thence to Arezzo, which as Vasari notices in the beginning of his Life remained his home to the end. He executed many windows there, in the cathedral and in S. Francesco, some of which still remain; and also works in fresco. Vasari declares that he owed to his teaching the first principles of art.

On the whole subject of the glass-painting craft see the Note on ‘The Stained Glass Window,’ postea, p. 308, where the curious confusion of two different processes, between which Vasari’s treatment oscillates, is elucidated.

Footnote 269:

The significance of Vasari’s demand for transparency in glass is explained in the Note, postea, p. 308.

Footnote 270:

It is somewhat remarkable that the Venetians, who practised the art of glass mosaic from about the ninth century, and in the thirteenth began their famous glass works, never achieved anything in the technique of the stained glass window. Venetian glass vessels, like the glorious lamps from the Cairo Mosques, owe much of their beauty to the fact that the material is not clarified but possesses a beautiful warm tone. It is indeed more difficult to get clear glass than tinted.

Footnote 271:

For the most part this description, with the exception of the part about scaling-off glass in order to introduce a variety in colour, corresponds closely with the technical directions which Theophilus gives so fully and clearly in his _Schedula Diversarum Artium_ of about 1100 A.D. It is pretty clear that Vasari is telling us here what he learned from William of Marcillat who would have inherited the traditions of the great French glass-painters of the thirteenth century.

Footnote 272:

The ‘scaglia’ is the thin scale that comes off heated iron when cooling under the hammer, and is collected from the floors of smithies. Vasari thinks of it as a ‘rust’ ‘ruggine,’ because rusty iron scales off in much the same way, the cause in both cases probably being oxidization. Hence the expression ‘another rust.’

Footnote 273:

The pigments or pastes that are to be fused on to the coloured glass, to modify its hue or to indicate details, are powdered and mixed with gum for convenience in application. The gum is not to serve as permanent binding material as the pastes are subsequently fused and burnt in on the glass.

Footnote 274:

It will be understood that the glass subjected to this treatment is not coloured in the mass, or what is called ‘pot-metal,’ but has a film of colour ‘flashed’ or spread thinly on a clear sheet. This is done with certain colours, such as the admired ruby red, because a piece coloured in the mass would be too opaque for effect. Economy may also be a consideration, as the ruby stain is a product of gold.

Footnote 275:

The composition, which when fused stains the glass yellow, may before fusion be of a red hue. As a rule the yellow stain on glass is produced by silver. Vasari does not say what his composition is.

Footnote 276:

The red film is what Vasari understands by the ‘painting.’ This might fuse and run with the heat required to fuse the yellow.

Footnote 277:

That is, the space where the yellow leaf is to come may be cleared of the red film _after_ the yellow leaf has been painted on the back, as well as _before_ that process. The process Vasari describes of introducing small details of a particular colour into a field of another hue is a good deal employed by modern workers in glass, but it was not known to Theophilus, or much used in the palmy days of the art, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Footnote 278:

In Theophilus’s time these convenient leads grooved on both sides, which are still in use, were not invented. He directs the worker to bind strips of lead round each piece of glass and then solder together the leads when the pieces so bound are brought into juxtaposition.

Footnote 279:

‘Niello’ is from the mediaeval Latin ‘nigellum,’ ‘black,’ and refers to the black composition with which engraved lines in metal plates were filled, according to the process detailed by Vasari.

Footnote 280:

It is curious that the chapter ends without any discussion of the chasing of gold and silver plate.

Footnote 281:

To some small extent the ancients do seem to have filled the engraved lines in their bronze or silver plates with colouring matter, and the known examples are described in Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités_, art. ‘Chrysographia,’ p. 1138. Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XXXIII, 46, gives a recipe, as used by the Egyptians, for a material for colouring silver that corresponds with the composition used for niello work, though the use he indicates seems rather that of an artificial _patina_ than a filling for incisions. In any case the use of such a filling in antiquity was quite uncommon, for the innumerable incised designs on the backs of Greek and Etruscan mirrors and on caskets like the Ficeronian Cista show no indication of the process, though of course in the lapse of time the incisions have acquired a darker tinge than the smooth surfaces of the metal, and Vasari may have seen them filled with accidental impurities.

Footnote 282:

A burin is shown in Fig. 2, D, ante, p. 48.

Footnote 283:

Vasari makes no mention here of sulphur, which in the recipes given by Pliny, Theophilus, and Cellini, is a constant constituent of the black amalgam. Silver and lead alone would not give the black required.

Footnote 284:

The ‘Pax,’ Italian ‘pace,’ was a little tablet of metal or some other material used in churches to transmit the kiss of peace from the priest to the people. Certain paxes once in the Baptistry of Florence have now found their way through the Uffizi to the Museum in the Bargello, but experts are not agreed as to the ascription of

## particular examples to Finiguerra. See Milanesi’s note on this artist

at the close of Vasari’s Life of Marc Antonio Raimondi (_Opere_, V, 443).

Footnote 285:

In Vasari’s first edition, of 1550, there is a notice of Finiguerra in the Life of Antonio Pollaiuolo (p. 498) and he there celebrates only the skill of Maso as a niellist, but in the edition of 1568 there is another notice of him in connection with Marc Antonio (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, V, 395), and here Vasari claims for him the credit of being the first to make the advance from niello work to copper-plate engraving. This second passage is a famous one, and describes how Finiguerra moulded his silver plate, incised with a design, in clay, and then cast it in sulphur, and subsequently filled the hollow lines in the sulphur cast (which reproduced the incisions on the silver plate) with lamp-black, so that they showed up more clearly. He then seems, according to Vasari, to have pressed damp paper against the sulphur plaque so treated, and obtained a print by extracting the black from the lines. Benvenuto Cellini however, a better authority than Vasari on Finiguerra, praises him as the best niello worker of his time, but says nothing about this further development of his craft, and on the contrary ascribes the invention of copper-plate engraving to the Germans. Cellini tells us at the end of his ‘Introduzione,’ that in 1515, when fifteen years old, he began to learn the goldsmith’s trade, and that then, though the art of niello work had greatly declined, the older goldsmiths sang in his ears the praise of Maso Finiguerra, who had died in 1464. Hence, Cellini says, he gave special attention to niello work, and he describes the process, at rather greater length than Vasari, in the first chapter of his _Treatise_ on Gold-work (_I Trattati, etc. di Benvenuto Cellini_, ed. Milanesi, Firenze, 1893).

The question of the origin of copper-plate engraving need not be here discussed. Any of the incised silver or bronze plaques of the ancients might have been printed from; and as a fact some incised bronze discs that are placed at the bottoms of the towers in the great crown-light of the twelfth century in the Minster at Aachen have actually been put through the printing press and the impressions published, though no one at the time they were made can have thought of printing from them. In the same way wooden stamps in relief were used by Egyptians and Romans for impressing the damp clay of their bricks, though no one seems to have thought of multiplying impressions on papyrus or parchment. So trial impressions of niello plates, before the lines were filled in permanently, may often have been made, and not by Finiguerra alone. The idea of multiplying such impressions on their own account is now universally credited to the Germans, and this seems also to have been the opinion of Cellini. See his ‘Introduzione.’

Footnote 286:

That is to say, the bottoms of cups or chalices. There are notices of armorial insignia, enamelled at the bottom of cups of gold used by some of the French kings, in Labarte, _Histoire des Arts Industriels_.

Footnote 287:

Giulio: a piece coined under Pope Julius II, of the same value as the ‘paolo,’ and equivalent to 56 centesimi, or about 5½d. of our money.

Footnote 288:

That is, the outlines of the different figures, ornaments, or other objects executed in low relief on the metal. See the Note on ‘Vasari’s Description of Enamel Work’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 311.

Footnote 289:

‘The other kind’ probably refers to the incisions on the niello plates of which he has been speaking. These are hollow, or in intaglio, whereas the work he is here describing is in relief.

Footnote 290:

‘Si fermino col martello.’ The only practicable use of the hammer in connection with enamels is to pound the lumps of vitreous paste to a more or less fine powder, in which form they are placed over the metal. Theophilus, in