It has been usual--while acknowledging the great influence of these
engravings on the jewellery of the time--to doubt whether jewels exist
which have been executed in exact imitation of them. To show that such
designs were actually followed, we may point to a jewel figured by Herr
Luthmer in his catalogue of Baron Karl von Rothschild's collection at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, which follows in every detail the particular
engraving by Collaert just mentioned as having been ascribed to Cellini.
Collaert's influence was considerable in his day, and his compositions
circulated not only in Flanders, but also in Germany and other prominent
jewel-producing centres. Jewels are repeatedly met with, which, though
they do not follow in every detail Collaert's published designs, are
obviously inspired by them. A very notable example of such is a jewel,
to be referred to subsequently (p. 247), in form of a gondola containing
figures of Antony and Cleopatra, which was sold by auction in London for
a very large sum a year or two ago. With Collaert were several minor
designers of jewellery, such as Abraham de Bruyn (1538-after 1600),
among whose engravings are seventeen models for pendants and portions of
jewels in the style of the admirable French jeweller-engraver Etienne
Delaune. Other Dutch and Flemish engravers of ornament belong more to
the seventeenth century, and will be dealt with later.
At the furthest corner of Germany from Flanders was the ancient kingdom
of Hungary, where jewellery was employed in almost Oriental profusion.
The native costume is luxurious even at the present day, and in olden
times the nobility made a practice of attaching to it a great part of
their fortunes in the form of precious stones, which, in enamelled
settings of button-shape, termed "boglars," were sewn on, or were
mounted in aigrettes, or set in girdles or dagger-sheaths. Independent
jewels enriched with enamel-work in the Renaissance taste were produced,
too, in considerable quantity. Fine examples of the latter are preserved
in the museum at Buda-Pesth; while to the exhibition held there in 1884
Cinquecento jewellery of great beauty and wealth was lent by noble
Hungarian families. All these display striking similarity to the jewels
executed at Augsburg, Prague, and elsewhere in the latter part of the
sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth century. In addition to
those which betray the influence of foreign styles, there are jewels of
native work, whose surface is enriched with the so-called _Draht-Email_.
This "filigree-enamel," which was executed from the fifteenth to the
seventeenth century in Hungary and throughout the valley of the Danube,
is composed of bright opaque colours fired between cloisons or
partitions composed of twisted wire.
[Illustration: Design for a pendent whistle by Hans Brosamer.]
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
FRANCE--SPAIN
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