Glass

GLASS. - The most remote examples of glassmaking with an artistic character date back, in the Mediterranean basin, to the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty of the Pharaohs (1550 B.C.) and are represented by tiny polychrome balsam flasks, in which the decoration was obtained by pouring onto the vessel a thread of molten enamel in spirals.

But this art subsequently had a more conspicuous development in the centers of Phoenicia and particularly at Sidon, with glass blown into clay molds, and from there the vases, cups and bottles were imported into Etruria (the tombs between the 7th and 5th centuries B.C. attest to this), while at Pompeii and in Augustan Rome large blown glass vessels were produced under the influence of Syrian and Sidonian artists. In the subsequent imperial period, glass of Greco-Egyptian style was produced in Alexandria, in which technical virtuosity displayed every sort of striation, serpentine motifs, milky spirals, stars, rosettes, inlays with masks and flowers, as well as scratchings and grooves obtained with the use of the wheel and gilding applied by means of thin metal leaf. There were no technical innovations during the Early Christian and Byzantine periods, which saw the art of glassmaking move to the East, enriched with chromatic motifs, especially in the pastes for goldsmith work and in mosaic tesserae, and thence into the Arab world. After the 11th century, Western Europe revived forms and technical devices, and there were considerable productions at Altare, in the province of Savona, and at Venice. From there, in the advanced 13th century, these industries concentrated on the island of Murano, where the fourteenth-century master Giovanni Fioler became famous and, in the following century, the workshop of Angelo Barovier and his son Marino, who produced characteristic blue vases and "lattesini" and enameled works of splendid colors, such as the nuptial cups of the Museums of Murano and Bologna, the glass of the National Museum of Florence, on which the Triumph of Justice is depicted, and the large dish in the Civic Library of Trent with a diapered purple ground and a Byzantinizing frieze of vine shoots and grape clusters, birds in flight and peacocks. The Murano artisan dynasties gave blown glass, for over three centuries, an incomparable prestige of slender and delicate forms, with applications of filigreed leaf (à reticella), opalescences, engravings and imitations of hardstones, and with margarites, or pearls, obtained from the cutting of polychrome glass rods that served to form the vases known as millefiori. But the most artistically evocative expression of the Italian Quattrocento in this field is that of gold glass with graffiti, where the thin metal leaf was fixed with egg white and scratched by means of the point of a needle. The oldest work of this type is a very fine Madonna in the Civic Museum of Turin, attributed to Lorenzo Monaco, in which various tints show through beneath the graffito. Also in the 15th century a characteristic production began in Germany and above all in Bohemia, where crystal became established, with its brilliant reflections, suitable for grinding. During the Baroque period, France, which had held supremacy in the fourteenth century with the masters of stained glass, developed, through the work of the Parisian Lucas de Nehon (second half of the 17th century), the manufacture of sheets by casting and rolling and, at the same time, in England lead crystal, called flint, was coming into vogue. The eighteenth-century production appears dominated by the German factories of Nuremberg and Augsburg, with working by wheel and diamond point, and by those of Bohemia, whose methods were adopted by Giuseppe Briati of Murano for his large mirrors, with relief flower kilns. The industrial advances of the last century made the manufacture of glass objects mechanical and commonplace, and only in recent decades did the furnaces of Murano regain their prestige, placing their traditional craft skills at the service of the new decorative aesthetic.

Alberto Neppi

GOLDEN GLASSES

Among the relics of Christian antiquity, the golden glasses, also called cemetery glasses, are of notable importance for the scenes or figures represented on them, because they were preserved and found in the cemeteries, where they had been fixed in the lime of certain loculi, for the identification or ornamentation of the same.

Their discovery is contemporary with that of the cemeteries, since they are mentioned by Bosio in his Roma sotterranea. These glasses come in large part from the various Roman workshops; the art of the golden or engraved and carved glass also flourished in distant regions of the Empire, especially in Roman Gaul. They are not of Christian invention, because before being made by Christian artists or craftsmen they came out of pagan workshops, and perhaps also Jewish ones. The use of golden glasses, formed by placing a gold leaf, scratched with figures or letters, between two glasses then fused by fire, is traced back at least to the time of Caracalla (211-17), as a glass could demonstrate, coming from the cemetery of Callixtus, in which, among the other depictions, one is thought to be recognizable that presents the iconographic type characteristic of this Emperor. Similarly, from the same cemetery comes one of the oldest examples, with the inscription "Potita propina". In general, archaeologists agree in attributing the gilded glasses to the 3rd century and, especially, to the 4th.

The glasses are mostly the bottoms of cups, whose figures or inscriptions had been executed in such a way that their right side corresponded to the inner part of the cup itself, so as to be seen or read more easily by whoever used it. Their size varies, for the largest, from 8 cm to 10 cm and more; smaller, for the smallest, there being some of 3 cm. The inscriptions are almost always in Latin; those in Greek or in Greek-Latin are not lacking; sometimes they present spelling errors and interchange of letters (Critus - Zeus). According to some, the glass cups with Christian subjects served for the celebration of the Mass, or at least for the distribution of Communion, or finally for the agape meals over the tombs of the martyrs. As for the eucharistic use of the glasses, especially of the patenae (disks of glass, not cup bottoms; one should particularly recall the two patens known as those of Cologne), in the 6th century the author of the Liber Pontificalis attributes to Pope Zephyrinus (199-217) the order to use glass patens during the celebration of the Mass, and writes that Pope Urban (222-30) prescribed that silver patens be used (Lib. Pont., I, p. 139, n. 3 and p. 143, n. 2). In conclusion, as regards the cups with gilded bottoms, it can be said that these served every use of civil and family life, not only for Christians, but also for pagans, as is easy to deduce from the subjects represented on them, which are very varied: mythological (Achilles and Deidamia, the labors of Hercules, Minerva, Pluto, Serapis, Ceres, etc.), scenic, gymnastic, hunting, domestic, of rural scenes, of trades.

Placed upon the tombs, the cups suffered very serious damage and ruin at the hands of the plunderers of the cemeteries, who broke them to sell the fragments, the bottom often remaining fixed in the lime of the loculi. This practice is traced back even to the earliest times, with the Jews being accused of it, itinerant sellers, especially in Trastevere, who used broken glasses for exchanges in petty trade, a passage of Martial being referred to them: "... transtiberinus ambulator / qui pallentia sulphurata ("matches") fractis / permutat vitreis..." (Epigrams, I, 41 [old editions, 42], vv. 3-5), or also of Statius: "hic plebs scenica quique communitis / permutant vitreis gregale sulphur" (Silvae, I, 6).

The gilded glasses are important both from the archaeological point of view and, in a special way, from the hagiographic point of view, because even those with Jewish subjects (temple, 7-branched candelabrum, ark of the Testament) are interpreted as symbols or figures of Christianity. They can be distinguished, according to the scenes, into biblical: Adam and Eve, Susanna, Joseph in the cistern, bronze serpent, return of the spies from Canaan, Joshua halting the sun, Moses, Daniel in the lions' den, the three youths in the furnace, the story of Jonah, Tobit, the sacrifice of Abraham, etc.; into properly hagiographic: the Good Shepherd, the Madonna, Sts. Peter and Paul, often together with Christ, sometimes indicated with the X, the Evangelists, saints, pontiffs, Sts. Lawrence, Hippolytus, Timothy, Cyprian, Agnes and others, in groups or isolated; there are those with scenes of the New Testament: marriage at Cana, resurrection of Lazarus, Moses, Peter striking the rock

("Petrus virga perquosed fontes ciperunt quorer"), Jesus or the Lamb upon the mountain, and others; the familiar ones: spouses clasping hands, with the expression: "vivatis in Deo"; another example "Martvra Epecte vivatis". Groups of parents with children: often with one, sometimes with two, rarely with more: notable is a v. with the parents and four children.

In the scratched expressions, the concept of drinking and living almost always recurs, often in Greek with Latin letters: "bibe et propina, pie zeses, vivas cum parentibus tuis, pie zeses cum Donata, piete zesete - propinate, refrigeris in pace Dei, spes hilaris, zeses cum tuis, dignitas amicorum vivas cum tuis feliciter, hodor suavis"; or in Greek: ΠΙΕ ΖΗCΑΙC ΕΝ ΑΓΑΘΟΙC, ΕΥΟΔΙ ΓΑΥΚΥΤΑΤΕ. ΖΗCΑΙC ΑΝΙΜΑ ΒΟΝΑ. ΚΟΝΙΑΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΕCΤΙΝΑ ΠΙΕ ΖΗCΕC.

Important is the glass cup with deep engravings, depicting Christ with the monogrammed Cross and an open book in his right hand and with a palm and a basket of loaves at the sides (4th-5th century), recently found in a drain of a house in ancient Ostia.

Christian of Ostia, in Bollettino d'arte del Ministero della pubblica istruzione, no. 3, July-Sept. 1932, pp. 204-10.

Carlo Carletti