Erasmus Hornick likewise exercised a potent influence on the jewellery
of the time. He engraved in 1562 a series of pendants, chains, and other
jewels of the most delicate execution (Pl. XXVII, 4-6). The pendants in
form of an architectural niche with the subject placed in the centre,
are the prototype of all the jewels of this kind which we meet with
subsequently in the prints of the Flemish engraver Collaert.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVII_ DESIGNS FOR JEWELLERY BY SOLIS, WOEIRIOT,
HORNICK, AND BROSAMER]
While many important engravings were being issued for the benefit of the
jewellers of Nuremberg, a great quantity of jewellery was produced at
Munich under the patronage of the Dukes of Bavaria. Duke Albert V had as
court painter a skilful miniaturist, Hans Mielich (1516-1573), whom
he employed to paint in the form of an inventory exact copies in
miniature of his jewels and those of his wife, Anne of Austria,
preserved in his treasury. In addition to these drawings, now in the
Royal Library at Munich, are a number of others, which came into the
possession of Dr. von Hefner-Alteneck, and on his death in 1904 were
purchased for the sum of £2,500 for the Bavarian National Museum.[126]
Though the majority of these drawings for jewellery, in themselves
works of extraordinary beauty, were copies of objects then already in
existence, the presence of jewels similar to Mielich's designs leads to
the supposition that this artist exercised a strong influence on the
jewellers of his day, and that a number of jewels were also executed at
the command of the Duke from original sketches of his. None of the
actual objects depicted by Mielich have survived, save a large gold
chain set with pearls, rubies, and emeralds, which corresponds,
particularly in its rich enamel-work, to one of the drawings lately
added to the National Museum. This chain is known as the collar of the
Order of St. George. The size and quality of its stones and the great
beauty of the enamelled settings render it, without doubt, the finest
article of its kind in existence. It is preserved in the Royal Treasury
(Schatzkammer) at Munich, together with a number of other objects of the
same type.
[126] Most of Mielich's works have been reproduced by
Hefner-Alteneck in his _Deutsche Goldschmiede-Werke des 16^t^e^n
Jahrhunderts_.
The last decades of the sixteenth century saw the appearance of a new
species of ornamental design, whose chief advocate, Theodor de Bry
(1528-1598), of Liège, with his sons Johann Theodor and Johann Israel,
settled in Frankfort-on-the-Main about 1560. It is a rich and varied
surface decoration, often of white upon a black ground, composed of
scroll ornament richly set with flowers, fruit, grotesques, and figures
of animals, the whole being charmingly designed, and engraved with great
brilliancy of touch. In addition to his more famous knife-handles, de
Bry executed several engravings for clasps, buckles, and metal
attachments to girdles.
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