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MEDI.EVAL GEM ENGRAVING.
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decline.3
The beveled edge shows that the stone was a nicolo about l.25 x l inch
in size. On the metal setting is the legend, cut in large letters—
LOTHARIUS DEI GRAC1A REX.
The Byzantine camei themselves supply a further illustration ; they
exactly agree in character with other bas-reliefs of the same origin in
whatever materials they may be executed, ivory, box-wood, marble, or
bronze.
Amongst
the Transalpine nations, at least during the last two centuries of the
period above indicated, heraldic devices would have been beyond all
others the subjects to employ the seal-engraver in preference to those
of a religious character. In fact, Agricola writing soon after 1450
mentions the engraving of coats of arms upon the German onyx as then
in common use, without the slightest allusion to that art as having
been but recently introduced into Holland. However, as Bruges was then
famed for its jewelers (L. de Berquem flourished there at that time),
no doubt every new invention in the lapidary's art speedily found its
way thither, and was cultivated to the utmost. It is on record how
munificently similar discoveries were remunerated by the wealthy of
those times, as Charles the Bold's liberality to the inventor of
diamond-cutting conspicuously testifies.
Briefly
to sum up the substance of the preceding arguments. For the space of
five centuries the Gothic seal-engravers were employed in executing an
infinite number of signets in metal, to which business all their skill
was devoted, as the elaborateness and occasional merit of the work
manifestly proves. The designs on these seals were invariably in the
taste of their age, being either religious or heraldic, and generally
accompanied by architectural decorations.
The
style of all these ages has an unmistakeable character of its own, from
which the simplicity of the artists could never deviate by an attempt
to revert to antique models; indeed, whatsoever Gothic art has produced
shows the exact date, almost the very year of its production. Yet
nothing, to speak generally, displaying the Gothic style has ever come
to light amongst the profusion of engraved stones preserved, not even
amongst those set in church plate, which would have admitted as more
appropriate to its own destination any
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