amethysts,
garnets, emeralds, is apparent from the number of antique gems of those
species extant, but recut into the then fashionable octagonal form for
the purpose of setting in mediaeval rings. Vasari's second date indeed,
1464, might be supposed to have some connexion with the influx of Greek
fugitives after the fall of Constantinople eleven years before. But
Vasari would certainly not have discerned any " improvement" in what
they were capable of producing, for Italian plastic art was by that
time fully perfected, as we see by Luca della Robbia's terra-cottas,
not to mention the bas-reliefs of Ghiberti and Donatello. And again, in
all probability very few of the artist class fled from Constantinople,
the Greeks naturally enough preferring the tolerant Mohammedans to
their persecuting rivals of the Latin Church. The emigrants were the
nobles, special objects of jealousy to the conquerors, and the
grammarians, whose learning was greatly sought after in Italy and most
liberally remunerated. Besides this, Byzantium, when the empire was
once more re-established after the expulsion of the Franks, who had
held the city during the first half of the thirteenth century, did
nothing more for art, its vitality having been utterly exhausted by the
grinding tyranny of those barbarians. When Vasari specifies two
particular periods after 1400, and quotes the pontificates of two popes
as manifest epochs of improvement in the glyptic art, he must be
referring to works done in Italy and by Italians. It is very provoking
that Vasari, usually so loquacious, should have passed over this most
interesting dawn of the art with such contemptuous brevity. He mentions
no engraver by name antecedent to Gio. delle Corniuole, who worked for
Lorenzo dei Medici, and had learnt the art from "masters of different
countries" brought to Florence by Lorenzo and Piero (his father, not
his son, it would seem) to repair (rassettare) the antiques
they had collected. These expressions prove that the art was
flourishing already in other places before it was domiciled in Florence
; and this was perhaps the reason why the patriotic Messer Giorgio
passes so slightingly over these earlier celebrities—" vixere fortes
ante Agamenona." Milan was long before noted for its jewelers ;
Anguilotto Bracciaforte was celebrated in the fourteenth century. These
lapidaries cut into tables and pyramids the harder precious stones,
such as spinels and
