The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance. P. L. Jacob
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance - P. L. Jacob страница 23
Название: The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance
Автор: P. L. Jacob
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4057664647573
isbn:
Nearly at the commencement of the renovation of ceramic art, Italian artisans had established themselves in various places, which then became so many artistic centres. Eastern Europe had for its earliest instructors three brothers, Giovanni, Tiseo, and Lazio, who settled at Corfu. Flanders was indebted for the knowledge of these processes to Guido of Savino, who took up his abode at Antwerp. And about the year 1520 we find a manufactory at Nuremberg, of which the ware, though materially differing in character from Italian majolica, may still very probably have been derived from Italy.
We may add that letters of the King of France mention that from 1456 there were certain revenues derivable from the “Beauvais Potteries;” and in the twenty-seventh chapter of the first book of “Pantagruel,” published in 1535, Rabelais places among the various articles composing the trophy of Panurge, “a saucer, a salt-cellar of clay, and a Beauvais goblet;” which proves, as M. de Sommerard remarks, “that as early as this date, there were manufactured in this city vessels of clay sufficiently good in quality to be placed on the table with silver and pewter utensils;” but it does not naturally follow that France had not long to wait for the man of genius who would soon leave her nothing to covet from Italy.
Fig. 36.—Cup, Italian Ware. In the Collection of Baron Alph. Rothschild. Taken from MM. Carle Delange and C. Borneman’s work.
About the year 1510, in a small village in Périgord, a child was born who, after receiving the rudiments of education, was obliged while still quite young to try to gain a livelihood by his own industry. This child’s name was Bernard Palissy. He first learnt the trade of a glazier, or rather of a glass-fitter and painter. This trade, while it initiated him into the principles of drawing, and gave him a certain insight into chemical manipulations, at the same time aroused in him a taste for art and the study of natural sciences. While “painting figures in order to gain his daily bread,” as he himself tells us in one of the works he has left behind him, and which gives us the highest opinion of his simple yet energetic nature, he applied himself to the study of the true principles of art in the works of the great Italian painters—the only artists then in repute. Owing to various circumstances the trade of glazier proving unprofitable, he at once began the study of geometry, and soon obtained credit, in the part of the country wherein he dwelt, as “a clever draughtsman of plans.” Such comparatively mechanical labour as this could not long suffice for the active vigour of a mind thirsting after progress and discovery. Moreover, Palissy, while employed on his calling as a land-surveyor, had never ceased to give close observation to the structure and composition of geological strata. With the purpose of dispelling the doubts in his mind, and also with the object of obtaining substantial confirmation regarding the system he had already originated, he began to travel. The result of his journeyings was the inauguration of a theory which, after having long been contemptuously rejected by the learned, was nevertheless destined to form the foundation of principles which are now considered as the basis of modern geological science.
Fig. 37.—A figured Border of an Enamelled Dish, by Bernard Palissy.
But if the certain knowledge which Palissy thought he had acquired as to the early convulsions of the globe had succeeded in satisfying his own mind, the glazier-surveyor (who was now a married man with a family) still remained in straitened circumstances, and was obliged to find some means of avoiding actual want. We must refer to what he himself says more than a quarter of a century later, and when success had completely crowned his efforts, to learn what were his recollections of his early and hazardous experiments in a new channel. “Know,” says he, in his expressive language, “that it is twenty-five years since an earthen vessel was shown to me; it was turned, enamelled, and of such exquisite beauty, that from that very moment I began to argue with myself, while remembering observations made derisively to me by some persons when I was painting figures. And seeing that they were beginning to give up the use of these objects in the country where I lived, and that glazing also was not in great demand, I set myself to think that had I but discovered the art of making enamel, I might make earthen vessels and other articles of beautiful appearance; for God had given me the capacity to understand a little about ceramic painting, and from that instant, without in the least regarding my utter ignorance of siliceous substances, I set myself to discover enamels like a man groping in the dark.”
It has been much disputed, but we may as well say at once to no purpose, how to assign with certainty a particular locality whence came this object which inspired Palissy; but whatever may have been its origin, it seems to us to be a question of little moment, because at the time when Palissy must have seen it, the Italian manufactories, and even those which were afterwards established in various localities, had succeeded in disseminating their wares far and wide; and, besides this, the works of Palissy, which we still see, bear testimony to a style that was peculiarly his own, and in some measure original.
However this may have been, here we have him seeking out and grinding all kinds of substances, mixing them, and coating with them pieces of ware which he first subjected to the action of an ordinary potter’s oven, afterwards to the more powerful heat employed by glass-makers. Then we see him building an oven in his own house—taking into his service a working potter, to whom, on one occasion, when he has no money for the payment of wages, he is obliged to give his own clothes; again we find him turning, single-handed, a mill for grinding his materials which ordinarily required “two powerful men” to work it; then again, wounding his hands in repairing the oven that the fire cracked, and the bricks and mortar of which had become “liquified and vitrified;” so that he is obliged for several days “to eat his soup with his fingers tied up in rags;” pushing the conscientiousness and zeal of an experimentalist so far as to fall down in a state of insensibility on finding that the whole contents of an oven, on which he had been relying, proved to have numerous defects. In despite
BIBERON OF HENRI II WARE.
Or Oiron fayence. (Pourtales’ Collection.) Now in the possession of J. Malcolm, Esq.
of his poverty we see him destroying pieces of work that he considered were not quite perfect, though a fair price was offered him for them, merely because “they might bring discredit on him and loss of reputation;” and finally, we see him breaking up and putting into the fire, for want of other fuel, the flooring of his house and the furniture of his humble abode.
The magnificent discovery, brought about by the single initiative of an individual who had said that he would succeed, and who heroically endured all kinds of misery, privations, and humiliations, in order to attain his object, was the labour of not less than fifteen years.
“To console me,” relates Palissy, “even those from whom I had a right to expect help laughed at me” (he here alludes to his family—his wife, and children—who had not the same unbounded faith as himself in the ultimate success of his labours); “they paraded the town exclaiming that I was burning the woodwork of my house; thus was my credit injured, and I was looked upon as a fool. Others said I was attempting to make base coin. I went about quite humiliated, ashamed of myself. I owed money in several quarters, and generally had two children out at nurse, and not able to pay the cost. All ridiculed me, saying: ‘He deserves to starve, because he has given up his trade.’
“Struggling СКАЧАТЬ