Certain defects which we note in the glass to which the Venetians applied their thick enamels may have been inseparably bound up with the use of these same enamels, and the impossibility of overcoming these defects may have been one of the causes of their abandonment and of the general adoption in their place of the painted decoration—mere thin skins of colour—which they were now able to apply to their white _cristallo_, the typical glass of Venice. After the commencement of the sixteenth century, indeed, the use of the solid enamels was almost confined to beadings and subsidiary ornament sparingly applied. [Illustration: _PLATE XXX_ VENETIAN GLASS 1. ENAMELLED LAMP. EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY 2. ENAMELLED GLASS CUP. FOUND IN EXCAVATIONS FOR CAMPANILE. FIFTEENTH CENTURY] To return after this long digression to our class of thinly painted enamels. We find that the use of these painted colours came in at quite an early date. I will take as typical examples a pair of goblets or wine-glasses in the British Museum, one from the Slade collection (No. 391), the other presented by the late Sir A. W. Franks. These are both conical cups of simple outline, of which the bowl passes directly into the spreading foot. The edge of this foot is turned over to form a sort of ring on the upper margin. In fact, these goblets may be taken as representatives of one of the earliest types of that long series of wine-glasses that we shall come across again and again in later days. On the first of these cups we see two figures on horseback, one waving a banner and the other holding a flag; the costume points to the end of the fifteenth century. This is a detail of some importance, for as a rule the decoration of this class of enamelled glass is confined to foliage, scrolls, and classically treated figures of sirens or satyrs. Almost identical in shape, and decorated in a similar manner, is a little goblet, or rather fragment of a goblet, lately dug up in the Piazza of St. Mark at Venice during the excavations for the foundations of the new Campanile. (Plate XXX. 2). This little glass, between four and five inches in height, is of a thinnish clear metal, decorated with scrolls of a somewhat Gothic character, indicated by lines of opaque white; the other enamels are green, an opaque red, a rich yellow, and a deep as well as a turquoise blue, the latter laid on thickly. This goblet may perhaps be referred to the middle of the fifteenth century. A still finer example of these ‘painted’ enamels is to be found in a very beautiful ewer now in the Louvre. The colours are laid on with a brush as in the previous specimens, but as we often find in later examples—and this applies equally to the French and German enamelled glass—the opaque red is here replaced by a poor brown. Within a large medallion is seen a herald riding on a griffin; the ground is covered by scale patterns and scrolls of many colours. CHAPTER XIII