Some of this enamelled glass no doubt dates from the early years of the next century. On the other hand, some of the thin white glass of capricious forms described in the next chapter may have been made before the year 1500. Apart from the generally vague ground of shape and style of decoration, there is no means of fixing the date of Venetian glass, so that in the absence of costumed figures or of coats of arms we are often very much in the dark on this point. Footnote 145: I have seen, however, in a fourteenth-century manuscript, glasses with well developed stems carefully depicted. Footnote 146: It was on the strength of the armour borne by this figure that M. Labarte attributed this cup to the early part of the fifteenth century. I may note that this goblet, as well as the one of green glass mentioned below, was bought in Italy for a small sum by M. Debruge Duménil, one of the earliest systematic collectors of Venetian glass. The elaborate catalogue of his collection, made very shortly after his death in 1847, by his son-in-law Jules Labarte, is a valuable record of the Italian art of the Renaissance. Footnote 147: James Howell, _Epistolæ Ho-elianæ_. Footnote 148: This vessel appears to be sometimes filled, not with water, but with moist sand or earth. Footnote 149: In the Louvre, the nymph of Giorgione’s ‘Fête Champêtre’ holds a jug of glass of graceful form over the well to the left, and in Titian’s ‘Supper at Emmaus’ in the same gallery, the twisting lines that surround a decanter with tall neck and handles, suggest a decoration with _latticinio_. Footnote 150: The quotation is from the Appendix to Vicenzo Cervio’s _Il Trinciante_, Venice, 1593. Footnote 151: ‘_Ma quando particolarmente se voglion’ far vetri bianchi di smalto vi s’aggiunge calcina di stagno e questo si chiama latticinio del quale si fanno opere diverse sopra i vasi di christallo_’ (Garzoni, _Piazza Universale_, 1585, p. 550). Footnote 152: But in the earlier writers this name is given rather to the imitations of agate—what was afterwards known as _schmelz_ (cf. p. 218). Footnote 153: A similar effect is obtained nowadays by means of a salt of uranium, but as is so often the case in the modern handling of old decorative systems, the opalescence is generally overdone. Footnote 154: Laborde, _Les Émaux au Louvre_, Part II. No. 498, and the same author’s _Les Ducs de Bourgogne_ (Archives of Lille). Footnote 155: In the museum at Murano is, or was, a similar plaque thus described by Zanetti, ‘_Una grossa piastra col busto incavato del Doge Andrea Gritti fra le initiali A. G._; _secolo XVI._’ (_Il Museo Civico-Vetrario di Murano_, 1881). Footnote 156: