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Caelatura, Antique Plate

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CAELATURA.                                       79
soldered together.1 This art also was revived and carried to extraordinary perfection by the Italians of the 16th century; they even went beyond the ancients, and applied it to steel for casques and bucklers of parade, of which examples of incredible excellence are to be seen at Florence, Paris, and one in the Tower armoury. The mode of applying the process to gold is minutely laid down by Cellini in his Oreficeria : his early reputa­tion was acquired by medallions executed in this manner. His Atlas in full relief made for Ginori, being afterwards presented to François I., was the reason for that king's summoning him to his court.2
The Greeks called working in relief τορεντική, in whatever metal ;3 but the particular branch working in silver came into high repute under Alexander's rich and luxurious successors. These artists the Romans called crustarii, from the small relievi, crustae. The latter wore more generally termed emblemata, from the mode of their application to the surfaces they decorated : being let into frames of ornamental work soldered upon their exterior, so that the emblema could be removed at pleasure : a mode of spoliation in which that unscrupulous amateur Verres is accused of having delighted.4 The head of the profession was Mentor ; for two bowls by him Crassus paid one hundred sestertia (1000L), a piece of extravagance which he declared he had always been ashamed to enter in his accounts. His four pair of vases (the masterpieces it would seem) had perished before Pliny's age in the burning of the Temple of Ephesus, and the
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