Enamel

ENAMEL. - In goldsmiths' workshops, enamels have always had, in every era, a notable application for the decoration of objects. The vitreous paste, colored in various ways with metallic oxides and fused, is superimposed on metal plates by different processes depending on the era and the schools.

I. CLOISONNÉ ENAMEL (cloisonné)

According to this technique, the vitreous paste is enclosed in cells formed according to the design and according to the chromatic varieties of the individual layers. The technique, of Persian origin, passed to the barbarian workshops in the complex of experiences derived from late Roman antiquity (fibulae of the Museo civico of Turin, ampulla of Pinguent, Vienna, Museum; crown of Theodelinda, Monza, treasury of the Cathedral, etc.).

In Byzantium this technique continued, but achieving the clearest transparencies in the colors, a harmonious movement of the golden line of the contour, and perfect coloristic inlays (group of enamels belonging to the oldest altarpiece of the cathedral of Venice, 11th century; reliquary of the Treasury of St. Mark, etc.). Thus at Montecassino, as at Palermo, through the work of Byzantine goldsmiths and imitators the technique was applied to rich sacred and secular goldsmith work (crown of Constance of Normandy, Palermo, Cathedral; mantle for the coronation of the Norman kings, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). In the other enamels with figurative motifs, the frequency of the gold wires of the cells decomposed and recomposed the surfaces in a stylistic rhythm that was imitated in painting until the late 13th century (Cimabue, Duccio). Among the works executed in southern Italy and Sicily: the reliquary Cross in the cathedral of Naples; the Gospel-book cover in the cathedral of Capua; the Mitre in the cathedral of Scala; the Cross of Gaeta; the Cross of Cosenza; the portable altar of Agrigento, etc. Receiving it directly and indirectly through contacts with the works of the Meuse and Rhenish workshops, this technique was pushed, with the graduated coloring of the enamels, to more plastic effects by the school recently localized in Lombardy, to which would belong the binding of the codex of Aribert of the 11th century (connected with the binding of the cathedral of St-Denis in the Louvre), the binding of the cathedral of Vercelli, the Peace of Chiavenna, etc.

II. CHAMPLEVÉ ENAMEL (champlévé)

The technique developed in the northern workshops, but of Roman origin, consists in pouring the enamel onto copper plates hollowed out according to the design, but lacking true cells. And at first (12th century) the figure or the decoration is colored with enamel, leaving the natural color of the metal in the background; then (early 13th century) the tone of the metal is reserved for the decoration and the background is colored with enamel. Under the pressure of sculpture, the figure is also modeled in copper, in whole or in part, superimposing it on the enameled surface. In this technique, in the workshops on the Meuse, enamels were executed for goldsmith works such as the Golden Cross (10th century) and the reliquary Shrine of St. Servatius at Maastricht, the portable altar of Stavelot in Brussels (Musées Royaux d'art et d'histoire), etc., always with rare skill. A new decorative repertoire gradually came into being, and from contacts with the goldsmith work of Spain Islamic motifs arrived, while other motifs passed from the squared backgrounds of French miniatures: inscriptions in pseudo-Kufic characters, slender branches with flowers, circles, small crosses, adorn the sacred and secular objects produced by the workshops of Limoges, which spread in vast series throughout Europe, also giving rise to various centers of imitation in Spain as in Italy (numerous examples in the Musée de Cluny, at the Louvre, in the Vatican Christian Museum, at the Bargello, in the cathedral of Agrigento, etc. Among the derivations: the Shrine of St. Dominic at Silos, a product of a Spanish workshop, the enamel of the ciborium of St. Nicholas of the cathedral of Bari, the Cross of the Museum of Catania, etc.). From these enamels too, which unfolded over a chromatic range varied from blue to sky blue, with greens and reds, influences reached the painting of the 13th century, along with certain stagnations of Byzantine iconographies more frequent in the Limoges works and of Ottonian iconographies in the workshops on the Meuse.

III. TRANSLUCENT ENAMEL

In Italy, mainly in Siena, a new technique arose in the second half of the 13th century, after Guccio di Mannaia gave the first example of it in the famous chalice of Nicholas IV (1288-92) in the cathedral of Assisi, a technique that soon spread throughout Europe, the one that Vasari said was executed on bas-relief. Once the need for a rigid outline had disappeared, enamel painting covers with a vitreous and shining surface the gold and silver sheet on which the figure or the scene has been traced in very delicate relief.

Among the masterpieces: the reliquary of the Most Holy Corporal in the cathedral of Orvieto executed by Viva and Ugolino da Vieri, and the reliquary bust of St. Agatha executed by Giovanni di Bartolo of Siena in Avignon, for the cathedral of Catania.

IV. PAINTED ENAMEL

While the technique of translucent enamel received numerous applications also in both church and secular goldsmithing, already in the mid-15th century at Limoges the new technique began that consists in painting with molten enamel on copper plates. Working with this technique, and bringing it to the highest perfection, were the masters Pénicaud, Léonard Limousin, Pierre Reymond, etc., and their production always maintained artistic quality.

In Italy, especially in the 18th century, enamel painting was used for sacred medallions, for snuffboxes, for various objects. In the goldsmithing of the 19th century, which was already beginning to be executed in series, enamels disappear, while they are taken up again with entirely new adaptations by modern goldsmithing, especially in France, preferring the older techniques that left to enamel the full freedom to compose pure and simple chromatic inlays. - See plates LII-LIII.

Maria Accascina