Before going on to speak of the glass made in Spain, it will be well to say a few words of that made in the Spanish Netherlands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Here, as might be expected from the course of trade, the Venetian influence was early felt, and before long became predominant. In the northern provinces, on the other hand, the old Teutonic traditions, both as to form and material, continued on the whole unchanged to a much later period, so that the glass of the United Provinces will be best dealt with in connection with that of Germany.

Already in the fourteenth century the Venetian galleys brought the glass of Murano to the Flemish ports. In some cases this glass was held worthy of being mounted in silver. A goblet and an aiguiÈre are mentioned in an inventory of 1379 as the property of Charles V. of France. These pieces are indeed described as ‘voirres blants de Flandre’: it is, however, very probable that they came in the first place from Venice.

As early as 1541 Venetian glass-workers were settled at Antwerp, but, as in France, the great invasion took place shortly after the middle of the century. It must be borne in mind that what we know of the wanderings of these gentilshommes de verre from Venice and from L’Altare is derived almost exclusively from the researches of Belgian antiquaries and archivistes. In the already quoted works of Houday, of Pinchart, and above all in the earlier and later letters of the Belgian judge, the President Schuermans, we have a wealth of information. M. Schuermans has traced these Italian glass-workers to Antwerp, to Brussels, to Namur, to LiÉge, Maestricht and Huy, and in the northern provinces to Bois-le-Duc, Middelburg, Haarlem, and Amsterdam. There was a great rivalry between the Muranese, who on the whole predominated at Antwerp, and the Altarists, whom we find for the most part at LiÉge: these were the two most important centres. The Low Countries indeed became before long a second home to these Italians, whence they wandered out again to France, England, and Spain.

While at Antwerp the true Venetian cristallo was imported free of duty, the imitations of that glass, the voirre de cristal, À la faschion de Venise, made over the French frontier at MÉziÈres or in Germany, and often difficult to distinguish from the originals, were strictly excluded, and these fiscal regulations were enforced by the most tyrannical measures. The case is well put by Mr. Hartshorne: ‘There were,’ he says, ‘in the Low Countries in the beginning of the seventeenth century, real Venetian glasses imported from Venice, Venetian glasses legally made in the Low Countries, those illegally made, and foreign imitations of Venetian glass’ (Old English Glasses, p. 39). Apart from these varieties of cristallo glass, the old verre de fougÈre doubtless continued to be manufactured.

Before the end of the sixteenth century, the glass-houses of Antwerp where glass À la faÇon de Venise was made had acquired a European reputation. They stood quite apart from the other furnaces in France or in the Netherlands where Italians were employed. Lodovico Guicciardini, the historian of the Netherlands, speaks as early as 1567 of the ‘vassella di vetro alla Veneziana’ made in Antwerp, and in the later editions of his work (Descrizione di Tutti Paesi Bassi) some further details are given. The testimony of another Florentine, Neri, from whose little book on glass I have already quoted, is still stronger. It was at Antwerp, he tells us, not at Venice, that he had studied the processes of glass-making.

If Antwerp thus early held a commanding position in Spanish Flanders, in the Walloon country the glass-houses of LiÉge in the course of the seventeenth century grew to a position of even greater importance. This was due above all to the enterprise of the great firm of the De Bonhommes, who before the end of the century had almost a monopoly of the glass trade in those parts: they even established subsidiary works beyond the frontier in such places as Verdun. They were one of the first on the Continent to see the importance of the new English flint-glass; at all events it is recorded that as early as 1680 they made flint-glass À l’Anglaise,^[177] and were thus able to withstand the Bohemian^[178] competition which at that time was carrying everything before it.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Bohemian engraved glass was copied in both the Walloon and Flemish parts of what is now Belgium. Indeed when the latter district fell under Austrian rule early in the eighteenth century, there was naturally a tendency to encourage Bohemian methods of decoration. Specimens of this engraved glass may be seen in the museums of many Belgian towns, but I have seen nothing to equal, in spirit and high finish, the contemporary engraved glass of the United Provinces. As for the earlier cristallo made at Antwerp, say from 1550 to 1650, the difficulty is to distinguish, in the case of the specimens that have survived, the local work from that imported from Venice, and we have evidence that even at the time the native experts could not always do so.^[179]

I must in conclusion just say one word about a source of information for the sixteenth and seventeenth century glass of the Low Countries which is for the most part wanting in the case of other countries. We have seen how little can be learned from the works of contemporary Venetian painters, of the famous glass of Murano (p. 202). But in the north it is quite otherwise; not only in the pictures of the still-life painters, but in genre scenes, and sometimes even in paintings of a devotional character, we meet with carefully drawn examples of glass. It thus happens that the works of the Flemish and Dutch painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throw a great deal of light upon the kinds of glass to be found both in the village alehouses and on the buffets of the wealthy. We can take note of the competition of the old heavy Teutonic forms with the Italian cristallo, a competition which continued in force during all this period.

It is, however, from a work of the Cologne school, from a picture of the early sixteenth century, now in the Louvre, representing the Last Supper,^[180] that I will take my first example. Here on the table we see a decanter with tall neck, delicately gadrooned, of distinctly Venetian type. The drinking-glasses also are apparently of cristallo of the well-known fifteenth-century form, without stem or knop. The cup of Christ alone has a cover. But there are also on the table several cups or beakers of a deep green glass, studded with small bosses—‘prunted’ glass, in fact, of a pure Teutonic type.

These two families of glass may be traced, often side by side, in much later works—in the pictures of the Flemish and Dutch schools of the seventeenth century. In the paintings of the former school, however, a clear white glass soon becomes prevalent even in humble surroundings. In the cabaret scenes of Teniers, the peasant drinks his beer from a tall hexagonal glass of thick whitish metal. The wine is kept in spherical long-necked flasks—a very old type which we have often met with in our history—a plug of rolled paper taking the place of a cork; it is drunk from wide-mouthed conical glasses of thin white metal. Similar glasses appear indeed in the pictures of the Dutch painters (as in more than one painting by Metsu and De Hooghe in the National Gallery). But in Holland, in the seventeenth century, the dark green or almost black prunted goblets of roemer type were apparently held in even greater estimation. In the famous terrace scene of Jan Steen (National Gallery, No. 1421), the wine, which is kept in a large pear-shaped glass vessel with a stopper of wood, is drunk from a small graceful roemer. In J. van de Velde’s still-life in the same collection (No. 1255) we see again a magnificent roemer, of very dark glass, with prunted stem and threaded foot, half filled with Rhenish wine.^[181] But if we turn again to the Flemish painters of this later time, we find that when in rich interiors they introduce specimens of glass among other objets de vertu, this glass is always of a Venetian type. There is one such painter, a follower of Jan Brueghel apparently, who loves to introduce among a wealth of plate and jewellery, piled on tables and shelves and even on the floor, the most elaborate specimens of the fine cristallo of Venice, proving in what esteem this glass was then held in the Spanish Netherlands. I might give many further examples, but enough has been said to show that as in the case of porcelain, of fayence and of plate, so for the history of glass, a mine of information may be found in the genre and other pictures of the Netherlandish school.

Spanish Glass

In the case of France we have seen how vast is the amount of documentary evidence concerning the glass of the renaissance, and how comparatively scanty on the other hand the in every way more satisfactory evidence to be drawn from the examination of existing specimens. Now in the case of Spanish glass these conditions are in some measure reversed. We here find the documentary evidence almost entirely wanting, but we in England, at any rate, have in the British Museum, and more especially at South Kensington, fairly extensive collections of glass from the Peninsula. I will not say that most of the examples are of any great artistic, still less of technical merit. Far too many pieces in the latter collection are but sorry imitations of debased French and English models of the eighteenth century, and even later times. But as we shall see, not a few types, earlier in style if not in actual date, may be distinguished, and these have a distinct local flavour.

This is the case above all with a class of rudely executed vessels that are found in the south of Spain—in Murcia, Andalucia, and Granada. The metal itself is of a primitive type, of various shades of green and bluish-green. Indeed, one of the points of interest in this South Spanish glass is to be found in the fact that it is essentially a glass of the people: it is a survival from mediÆval times, and it thus throws light upon the long extinct verre de fougÈre or wald-glas that was made all over the west of Europe before the introduction of the Venetian cristallo. Not that this Spanish glass is necessarily of the inland or potash family; we are here in a Mediterranean country, and the alkali has probably been found in the native soda-holding barilla. The shapes taken by this rude glass of the south of Spain often resemble those found in the local pottery; one is reminded at times of the graceful water-jars that are indeed common to nearly all the Mediterranean coast. A Moorish origin has been found for some of these forms, but we may perhaps go further back and call them Byzantine. The most characteristic shape is a vase with spherical body and with a tall expanding neck in the form of a truncated cone; neck and body are united by a series of handles, often eight or more in number (Plate XXXVI.). Now not only these handles, with their upper and lower attachments worked while hot by the pincers into toothed and crested forms, but the whole of the appliquÉ ornaments of the vessel—the threadings and the rude floral reliefs—take one back to a very old plan of decoration. This was a style much in favour in later Roman times—it is one that is perhaps per se the most characteristic and natural of all methods of treating the surface of glass. A similar many-handled vase is a common type among the peasant pottery of the same districts of Southern Spain; on this we find the same ring of handles, while the appliquÉ threadings and rosettes of the glass are replaced by a similarly applied slip ornament. This pottery is still manufactured for local use, but I do not know whether any of the rude green glass is produced at the present day.

We have little or no information about the glass made in Spain during the Moorish domination. There is a vague tradition that the manufacture was carried on in Murcia and Andalucia, and Al Makari, the historian, states on the authority of an author of the thirteenth century, that Almeria was famous for its vessels of glass as well as for those of iron and copper.^[182]

It is the district lying inland, some distance to the north of Almeria, that has long, probably from Moorish times, been the centre of the glass industry of the south of Spain;—this is especially true of Pinar de la Vidriera and of Castril de la PeÑa. At this latter town, Don Juan RiaÑo tells us, glass has been made from time without memory, and indeed is still made there. ‘A gallery one mile long which exists at the entry of the town from which sand has been extracted for this manufacture, gives an idea of the antiquity of this industry’ (Industrial Arts of Spain, p. 232).

There is only one other centre of the manufacture of glass in Spain that need detain us. This lies in the coast district of Catalonia, above all around Barcelona; for this town we have direct evidence of the manufacture as far back as the early part of the fourteenth century.^[183] At this time the Catalan mariners were the boldest and the most skilful in the whole Mediterranean, and active rivals of the Venetians in the ports of the Levant. Now there is one variety of enamelled glass formerly attributed to Venice, which, as is at present generally acknowledged, has its origin in the Peninsula: much of it was made at Barcelona. The prevailing note of the enamel on this glass is a very beautiful apple-green, of two tints, one passing into yellow. This colour is sometimes found alone, at others associated with a few touches of other enamels—a lavender blue, for instance, but these other colours are of no great brilliancy. The green much resembles that found on the enamelled glass of the Saracens, where, however, this colour was always sparingly applied. The patterns on the Catalan glass are generally of a formal floral character, often built up of sprigs radiating from a centre. But technically the most noticeable point in this enamel is the method of its application. As in the case of the Saracenic glass, it is laid on with a loaded brush; it lies in thick semi-transparent masses on the surface. As a result we have a rich and jewel-like effect that we may look for in vain in the flat opaque painting that we see on so many European wares. There are several pieces of this glass in the British Museum, but the most beautiful example that I have seen is in the Museo Civico at Venice. This is a little flask lately acquired from the Maglione collection at Naples; the dominant green enamel is here relieved by some yellowish foliage and by red and white birds.

I do not think that any existing example of this green enamelled glass could be safely referred to an earlier date than the end of the fifteenth century. But it is not improbable that the Catalans learned the use of these enamels not from the Venetians, but directly from Saracenic or Jewish glass-workers in some of the ports of the Levant. Such a distant source for this decoration, which is indeed somewhat Oriental in character, I think more probable than a local one in Spain, for we have no evidence that the Moors, when they held the Peninsula, ever practised the art of enamelling glass, nor indeed were the Catalans, after very early times, ever brought much into contact with their Mohammedan neighbours: their main dealings were with the Levant.

That the glass of Barcelona was widely known and held in some repute before the end of the fifteenth century, the following notices go far to prove. As early as 1491—so it is stated in a contemporary Latin manuscript—glass vessels of various shapes, resembling those made at Venice, were exported to Rome from Barcelona. Again, when Philippe le Beau passed through the latter town in 1503, we are told that he went ‘en dehors de la ville veoire ung four ou faict voires de cristallin trÈs beaus’ (Schuermans, Bulletin xxix. p. 138 seq.). Finally, Ferdinand of Aragon, about the same time, is reported to have sent to Queen Isabella a present of 274 pieces of glass manufactured in Barcelona. That this glass must have been possessed of some artistic merit we may infer from the fact that the Queen presented several pieces to the Capella de los Reyes at Granada. These we may perhaps identify with the vasi di vedro seen among the treasures of this chapel a few years later by the Venetian ambassador (Andrea Navagero, Viaggio in Spagna et in Francia). M. Gerspach, I may add, calls attention to an inventory drawn up during the reign of Philip II., in which, under the heading of bidrios de Barcelona, 119 pieces of glass of various forms are catalogued; among other things—and this is a point of great interest—mention is made of some enamelled lamps.

At a much later date, not before the eighteenth century probably, a good deal of opaque white glass, in imitation of porcelain, was made at Barcelona. At South Kensington may be seen a series of quadrangular flasks of this material with bevelled edges, about six inches in height. These flasks—they probably served to hold essences and spirits—are somewhat rudely painted with floral designs in bright primitive colours—red, blue, and yellow. Both in India and Persia we come across examples of glass decorated with ‘painted’ enamels, almost identical in shape and size with these Spanish bottles. Not only these, but some of the sherbet-jugs and coffee-cups of this milky glass, that are still often found in many parts of the East, may well have come from this district. It will be remembered, however, that a very similar ware was made about the same time both in France and at Venice.

Other towns in Catalonia, as CervellÓ, Almatret, and above all MatarÓ, became famous for their glass in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There is more than one record of distinguished foreign princes who were conducted in royal galleys to visit the glass-works of this last town.

M. Schuermans has discovered the names of more than twenty Italians from L’Altare or from Venice, who found their way to Spain, in some cases by way of Flanders. At Lisbon, too, in the seventeenth century, there were many foreign glass-makers, Muranese, Altarists, and Flemings.

At Cadalso, in the province of Toledo, glass-furnaces were at work as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century; indeed they are said at that time to have supplied the whole kingdom of Castile. At these works, at a somewhat later time, the Italian influence became very strong, and no doubt many Muranese or Altarists were employed.

Before the end of the seventeenth century, the general decline so noticeable in all the industries of Spain spread, it would seem, to the glass-works. Workmen were now obtained chiefly from the Low Countries, and in addition much glass was imported by sea from Antwerp. To how low a state the glass industry had fallen at this time may be inferred from the fact that orders for ‘Mexico and the Indies’ had to be executed abroad. In the next century, when Spain had lost her Flemish possessions, their place as a source of glass-ware was taken by France. Philip V., about the year 1720, founded a royal glass manufactory near his summer palace of La Granja de S. Ildefonso, and workmen were gathered together from all sources—there were Germans and Swedes as well as Frenchmen. These works were above all established, in rivalry to St. Gobain (p. 235), for the preparation of large mirrors of plate-glass, but all sorts of ‘hollow ware’ were also produced there. This later Spanish glass, made to royal order, is, however, utterly devoid of any interest, and it need not detain us.