In the fourteenth century, as we have seen, the Venetian galleys brought glass ware to the ports of England and the Netherlands. M. de Laborde (Les Ducs de Bourgogne) found in the archives of Lille an order for payment, signed by Duke Philip of Burgundy, ‘pour seze voirres et une escuelle de voirre, des voirriers que les galÉes de Venise ont avan apportez en nostre pays de Flandres—quatre franc.’ This is dated from Paris, 1394. Even after making every allowance for the larger purchasing power of money in those days, the seventeen vessels of glass bought by a royal prince for four francs cannot have been of exceptional quality. Again, in the year 1399, Richard II., shortly before his deposition, granted permission to certain traders to sell, on the decks of the Venetian galleys lately arrived in the port of London, their cargo of small glass vessels and earthenware plates (Calendar of State Papers—Venetian, 1899-1900). Here again there is nothing to suggest any high artistic value in the glass offered for sale.

As we have seen, with the possible exception of two goblets in the British Museum, there does not exist a single example of glass of an earlier date than the fifteenth century, which can definitely claim to be of Venetian origin.

The quattro-cento glass of Venice,^[144] for the most part decorated with enamel and gilding, may be conveniently arranged in accordance with the nature of the enamels that cover it.

I will take first a class in which the enamel plays but a subordinate part. The clear white glass, somewhat thick and heavy compared with later examples, is often ornamented with appliquÉ bosses of coloured glass; such glass is sparingly decorated with opaque enamels, and this decoration takes the form of little beads or studs, at times combined with an imbricated pattern in gold. We sometimes meet with large bowls on low feet (a form of drageoir or sweetmeat dish) which are so decorated. There is, however, no finer example of this style of ornament than the standing beaker with cover in the British Museum (Slade, 362). The general outline and the obliquely curved gadroons of this magnificent cup were no doubt suggested by some piece of late Gothic silver-plate. On the flat-headed knob that surmounts the cover are the half obliterated remains of a coat of arms, but otherwise the enamelling is confined to some sparely applied studding and filleting. There is a covered goblet of the same class in the Waddesdon collection remarkable for an inscription in some South-Slavonic dialect, scratched with a diamond on the foot. The blue and purple bosses round the body of these beakers partake somewhat of the nature of prunts.

Another class of fifteenth-century enamelled glass calls to mind in the manner of its decoration the contemporary enamelled copper ware of Venice (Émaux peints). Indeed, in some examples where the enamel is spread over the whole field and subsequently decorated with other colours, there is little to indicate that such a vessel has a basis of glass rather than of metal. This is the case with the beautiful goblet covered with pale turquoise blue enamel in the Waddesdon Room in the British Museum. The decoration is given by an elaborate imbrication of white, red, and gold; the well-drawn male and female figures, in lozenge-shaped medallions, closely resemble certain woodcuts in Venetian books of the fifteenth century. If, as is probable, this cup is not much later in date than the year 1450, we have in it one of the earliest examples in glass of the complete goblet or wine-glass form, with bowl, stem, and foot.^[145] The outline of the bowl should be noticed: the double curve, tending somewhat inwards at the top, is characteristic of these quattro-cento glasses; here again the form is doubtless derived from silver-plate.

These opaque solid enamels are, however, more frequently applied here and there upon a basis of transparent coloured glass. For the ground a deep cobalt blue was most in favour, but a rich leafy green and other colours also occur at times. The opaque enamels are laid on thickly in masses; upon these again details are painted by further touches of colour.

Perhaps the most famous example of this class is the Coppa Nuziale in the Museo Civico at Venice (Plate XXIX.). This cup, in outline somewhat like a Greek crater, with simple massive foot and stem, is of deep blue glass; it is some eight or nine inches in height. On one side we have a procession of knights and ladies on horseback; on the other side the company are seen bathing in an open fountain. Between are medallions with male and female heads—presumably the bride and bridegroom. The costume would point rather to the first than to the second half of the fifteenth century. There is not much prominent colour apart from the green of the grass and the trees; the horses and the flesh-tints are rendered by white enamels, and gilding, of course, is freely used; here and there we see a little pale blue enamel. This coppa is traditionally assigned to Angelo Berovieri, the greatest name among the Venetian glass-workers of the fifteenth century. To him indeed the introduction, or at least the perfection, of the process of enamelling on glass is generally attributed.

In the British Museum (Slade, 363) is another Coppa Nuziale, on which the style of the decoration closely follows that of the Berovieri cup. We have the same deep blue ground and the same treatment of the solid opaque enamels; the bowl, however, in this case is cylindrical. On one side we see a Cupid seated on a two-headed swan, conducting a triumphal car; on the other, Venus enthroned in another car is preceded by a figure—presumably Hymen—bearing a torch; in front a centaur is grasping the hand of a man in full armour.^[146]

The bright green enamel by which on these cups the grass and the conventional trees are rendered, is perhaps the most characteristic colour of this quattro-cento ware. Note also on the wide-spreading foot the manner in which the gold is applied: in the use of this metal, if in nothing else, the Venetians surpassed their Saracenic predecessors. Here we have an early instance of gilding semÉ or broken up into minute irregular fragments. The gold appears to be incorporated with the glass; it must have been laid on at an early stage, for it lies scattered in detached fragments, and this is undoubtedly caused by the dragging of the glass, while still soft, during the process of manufacture. This manner of applying gold was used with great effect by the Venetians during the finest period—before and after 1500. Notice especially a little cup of thin white glass in the British Museum, on which the decoration is confined to a delicate powdering of gold of this nature.

Of the application of enamels of this class to a deep green ground, there is no finer example than the standing cup from the Debruge and Soltykoff collections (Slade, 361). This, too, is without doubt a Coppa Nuziale, and in the heads in the two medallions we may again recognise the bride and bridegroom. On a scroll by the latter head we read, AMOR VOL FEE—‘Love needs faith.’ The quaint head-dress of the woman calls to mind certain figures in Carpaccio’s pictures of contemporary Venetian life.

In the enamelled cups of this class the technical imperfections of the deep-coloured glass ground should be noticed. This is seen above all in the irregular outline of the margin. We have here a class of imperfection of quite a different nature from the tendency to collapse so often seen in large pieces of Saracenic glass. In the case of the Venetian glass the unevenness appears to arise from the imperfect fluidity of the metal when in the hands of the blower.

The date of this enamelled glass is fairly well fixed by the style in which the figure subjects are treated. The processions—the trionfi—are but rudely executed reproductions of those found on fifteenth-century marriage coffers, the heads in the medallions we meet with again on the contemporary mezza-majolica. Both may be seen in the woodcuts of the earliest printed books. We find the source of the gadroons and imbricated patterns in the repoussÉ forms given by the Venetians to their enamelled copper-ware.

There is somewhat more difficulty in determining the date of another class of Venetian enamelled glass. I refer to that on which the opaque enamels are painted with a brush upon a ground of thin colourless glass. In this decoration, especially in the conventional foliage, the drag of the brush loaded with the thin, somewhat intractable pigment, may often be clearly traced. There are some early examples of these ‘painted’ enamels which we may regard as the prototypes of a style of decoration on glass which soon obtained almost a monopoly among enamelled wares. We see the same technique and the same opaque colours on the French glass of the sixteenth century, and the faults are exaggerated and the palette even heavier in the case of the German glass of a still later time. We must seek the origin of this school in the Italian painters on majolica; on the other hand, in the eighteenth century the methods of the enamellers on glass no doubt influenced the decorators of porcelain both in Germany and elsewhere.

And here I may say that certain important technical difficulties, that must always have hampered the use of true transparent enamels on glass, have scarcely received the attention that they deserve. I mean the relations of the enamels, as regards the softening-point and rate of contraction on cooling, to the ground on which they rest. The question here is very similar to that which presents itself in the case of porcelain. Our present problem is, however, somewhat simpler, for with the latter material we have not only to consider the relation of the enamels to the glaze on which they lie (this takes, indeed, the place of our glass ground), but in addition the relation of the glaze itself to the porcelain body beneath must not be neglected.

The first condition for the successful application of an enamel is that it should be more fusible than the glass to which it is applied; not only that, but at the temperature at which the enamel fuses, the glass must still maintain its rigidity, otherwise the vessel on coming from the enameller’s stove will not preserve its original symmetry. It has been already suggested that the partial collapse so often observed in the large Cairene lamps may probably be explained in this way.

On the other hand, if the surface of the glass is not to some degree softened, there will be no intimate connection between it and the enamel, and the latter will be likely to scale off before long. This tendency will be increased if there is much difference in the rate or amount of contraction between the two materials. Difficulties of this kind long hindered the employment of certain fluxes and colours—that of cobalt, for instance, combined with a transparent flux. Such obstacles may, however, be surmounted in a measure, and the process simplified by employing (in place of a transparent lead flux) an opaque white, stanniferous enamel merely stained, in cases only externally, by a little colouring material. This apparently was the plan universally adopted by the Venetians in the fifteenth century, and it is here that their experience of the use of a similar enamel on copper may have served them.

One cannot but marvel at the technical dexterity so early acquired, and, alas! so soon lost by the Saracens, in the application of enamels to glass. The means by which they avoided the use of a lead flux in the case of their famous translucent blue, is above all worthy of admiration (see above, Chapter X.).

Certain defects which we note in the glass to which the Venetians applied their thick enamels may have been inseparably bound up with the use of these same enamels, and the impossibility of overcoming these defects may have been one of the causes of their abandonment and of the general adoption in their place of the painted decoration—mere thin skins of colour—which they were now able to apply to their white cristallo, the typical glass of Venice. After the commencement of the sixteenth century, indeed, the use of the solid enamels was almost confined to beadings and subsidiary ornament sparingly applied.

To return after this long digression to our class of thinly painted enamels. We find that the use of these painted colours came in at quite an early date. I will take as typical examples a pair of goblets or wine-glasses in the British Museum, one from the Slade collection (No. 391), the other presented by the late Sir A. W. Franks. These are both conical cups of simple outline, of which the bowl passes directly into the spreading foot. The edge of this foot is turned over to form a sort of ring on the upper margin. In fact, these goblets may be taken as representatives of one of the earliest types of that long series of wine-glasses that we shall come across again and again in later days. On the first of these cups we see two figures on horseback, one waving a banner and the other holding a flag; the costume points to the end of the fifteenth century. This is a detail of some importance, for as a rule the decoration of this class of enamelled glass is confined to foliage, scrolls, and classically treated figures of sirens or satyrs.

Almost identical in shape, and decorated in a similar manner, is a little goblet, or rather fragment of a goblet, lately dug up in the Piazza of St. Mark at Venice during the excavations for the foundations of the new Campanile. (Plate XXX. 2). This little glass, between four and five inches in height, is of a thinnish clear metal, decorated with scrolls of a somewhat Gothic character, indicated by lines of opaque white; the other enamels are green, an opaque red, a rich yellow, and a deep as well as a turquoise blue, the latter laid on thickly. This goblet may perhaps be referred to the middle of the fifteenth century.

A still finer example of these ‘painted’ enamels is to be found in a very beautiful ewer now in the Louvre. The colours are laid on with a brush as in the previous specimens, but as we often find in later examples—and this applies equally to the French and German enamelled glass—the opaque red is here replaced by a poor brown. Within a large medallion is seen a herald riding on a griffin; the ground is covered by scale patterns and scrolls of many colours.