Chats on Old Miniatures. Foster Joshua James

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      Byzantium, as I have said, was a great seat of the cloisonné process, and the celebrated "Pala d'oro," a magnificent altar front now preserved at St. Mark's, Venice, was made at Constantinople about the year 1100. In champlevé enamelling, although the art was practised in the Rhenish provinces of Germany, it was at Limoges, in France, that the finest work was done, and in the thirteenth century opus Lemoviticum was in high favour. A century later, when the city was sacked by the troops of Edward the Black Prince, the manufacture received a great check. But with the Renaissance came a renewed demand for enamels, which were used in combination with articles of domestic utility, and in the reign of Francis the First the enamellers of Limoges, among whom Suzanne de Court, Laudin, Jehan Courtois, and Pierre Reymond are well known, produced decorative works of the most costly and beautiful nature. Whole families devoted themselves to the art, and their traditions were handed on from generation to generation. But perhaps the most famous name in connection with this French work is that of Léonard Limousin, and three others, namely, Jean, Joseph, and François, of the same family.

      Léonard Limousin, who was appointed painter to the king, François I., has expressed in numerous pieces which have come from his hand the very spirit of the Renaissance, partly devotional and still more strongly classical and sensuous in feeling and treatment. Old Limoges enamel, as we all know, is extremely valuable; single pieces from the Hamilton Palace Collection were sold at Christie's in the celebrated sale for something like £2,000 apiece.

      The subject is far too wide to be treated exhaustively in this book, but at the Victoria and Albert Museum examples will be found of the various styles, and the varied uses to which they were applied. The British Museum of late years has been enriched by what is known as the Waddesdon Collection, bequeathed by the late Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild; and in Paris the Cluny Museum, and especially the Salle d'Apollon in the Louvre, are extremely rich in works of this nature.

      All these collections contain portraiture in enamel, but one would hesitate to say that the portrait is the primary object in the production of these works, in which undoubtedly a decorative feeling largely predominates.

      Although in the general treatment they were feeling their way to a larger palette, no attempt seems to have been made by these earlier artists to get anything approaching reality in the flesh tones; they were left a uniform cold white. Until one has got a little used to this absence of colour, and the metallic hardness which the use of oxide of tin in the paste of the enamel gave rise to, and until one recognises that it is the conventional mode of treating them, the pallor of the faces, contrasted, as it generally is, with a deep blue, or sometimes shining black background, is somewhat repellent.

      Take, for example, the large medallion of the Cardinal de Lorraine, Charles de Guise, uncle to Mary Stuart, a piece which cost the nation £2,000, and may be seen at Kensington. It represents the Cardinal in scarlet robes and a biretta. The head, fully seven inches long, is painted upon a deep blue ground; his hair is black, the eyes are blue, and the effect of the whole is, it must be admitted, extremely hard, in spite of the distinguished name its author, Léonard Limousin, bears in the ranks of medieval enamellers. The work is as different as possible from the exquisite minuteness which characterises other enamel painters, like Petitot, for instance, to whom we shall come by and by.

      The same lack of modelling and of half-tones may be observed in the portraits in the Waddesdon room at the British Museum, to which reference has already been made. See, for example, the large panel, 9 inches by 12, or thereabouts, of Catherine de Lorraine, Duchess de Montpensier. This lady wears her hair in a golden and jewelled net; her open collar is laced with pearls; this piece is also signed Limousin, and may be regarded as a typical sixteenth-century portrait.

      The step forward which was to elevate the art of painting in enamel to the highest possible pitch of technical execution, of artistic treatment and minute finish, was taken by Jean Petitot, a Genevan, born in 1609. Apart from the wonderful skill of the artist, who, in respect of technique, must be considered absolutely unique, the means by which such beautiful, delicate, and minute effects could be produced in so difficult an art as that of fusing colours would be in itself an interesting study.

      Probably it is to Jean Toutin, an obscure French goldsmith, who lived at Châteaudun, and, assisted by Isaac Gribelin, a painter in pastels, and doubtless by his son, Henri Toutin, of Blois, produced, about 1632, a variety of colours which he found could be laid upon a thin ground of white enamel, and passed through a furnace with scarcely any change of tint, that Petitot owed the richness of his palette. From Toutin, and from Pierre Bordier, another French goldsmith, to whom he was apprenticed, Petitot gained the insight into enamelling which bore such rich fruit when he came to this country in his twenty-eighth year, attracted, there is little doubt, by the reputation then enjoyed by our king, Charles I., as a patron of art.

      The English monarch had in his service as physician at that time a certain Sir Turquet de Mayerne, himself a Genevan and a chemist of European celebrity. He and Petitot pursued scientific research into the nature and properties of the metallic oxides with such ardour and success that the miniature painter's palette became greatly enriched, and he was able to express all the nuances of flesh colouring in a way which had never before been approached and, I may add, has never been surpassed.

      When one realises the extraordinary minuteness and exquisite finish of a work of Petitot, and the difficulties of the method – by which I mean the risks attending the firing – it is almost incredible that such success could be attained; but probably there were large numbers of failures of which the world knows nothing.

      In some of the Limoges work we see attempts at colouring the cheeks; but the result is not satisfactory; whereas in Petitot it leaves absolutely nothing to be desired, and the most minute differences of character find expression in the art of this wonderful man. Take as an example the two portraits of Louis XIV., to be seen in the Jones Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, one representing the Grand Monarque when young, the other in more advanced years; or, from the same Collection, take the portraits of Mme. de Montespan and Mlle. de la Vallière; and compare these again with the insipidity and monotony of Lely and Kneller, the two artists most in vogue in this country at that time; here you have upon a small piece of gold, perhaps hardly bigger than a finger-nail, nearly all that may be looked for in a portrait, coupled with a perfection of technical execution to which it is impossible to do justice in words. One comes away from an examination of that admirable collection which the nation owes to the generosity of Mr. John Jones with a paramount feeling of astonishment, wondering how such work was done.

      Of course Petitot has had innumerable imitators; and although the standard of the Collection to which reference has just been made is very high, there are in it examples which are instructive, and serve to show how supreme the master was in his own line. A contemporary pupil, namely Jacques Bordier, was a cousin of the Pierre Bordier, Petitot's old master and colleague, of whom I have just spoken. According to M. Reiset this Jacques Bordier also worked in England with Petitot. Like Petitot, he returned to the Continent, and did a great deal of work in Paris upon watch-cases; the two men married two sisters, Madeleine and Margaret Cuper, in 1651. Pierre Bordier stopped in this country and executed an elaborate watch-cover, designed as a memorial of the Battle of Naseby, presented to General Fairfax, and described in the catalogue of the sale of Strawberry Hill, where it was sold. It was, doubtless, the troubles of the Civil War which drove the great enameller back to France, where he was well received by Louis XIV., and commissions flowed in upon him until the close of his life; indeed, he is said to have retired to Vevey to escape the importunity of his patrons; and there he died, at an advanced age, in the year 1691.

      The art of which this incomparable miniaturist was such a great exponent was peculiarly adapted to a form of patronage much in vogue at that time; that is to say, it was employed in the adornment of costly and exquisite snuff-boxes. These boites aux portraits, as they were called, were extensively used for diplomatic purposes, and portraits of the Grand Monarque were ordered by the dozen at a time. The presentation of boxes of such a СКАЧАТЬ