Of the designs of Moncornet (_c._ 1670) and Gilles Légaré (_c._ 1663) for jewelled ornaments we have already spoken. Moncornet, a great lover of flowers, accompanied his jewels by charming garlands. With him and Vauquer and Légaré must be associated the renowned enamel painter Jean Petitot (1607-1691), who was first an enameller of jewellery. So highly skilled was he as a painter of flower designs and foliage on rings and other ornaments, that on going over to England in 1635 he entered at once into the service of Charles I, where he brought to perfection his famous enamelled portraits. Several actual examples have survived of the enamel-work of Gilles Légaré, whose designs--the best-known of this time--reveal a charming feeling for natural flower ornaments. His _chef d'oeuvre_ is generally considered to be the garland of flowers painted in enamel in open-work relief that surrounds a miniature by Petitot of the Countess d'Olonne in the collection of Major Holford at Dorchester House. This splendid piece, on which the tints of the flowers are rendered with striking fidelity, was formerly in the collection of a great French connoisseur of the eighteenth century, P. J. Mariette. At his death it passed into the possession of Horace Walpole, who counted it as one of his special treasures. It joined the Dorchester House collection after the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842. If this magnificent enamel-work be by the hand of Légaré, and we may take Mariette's word for it that it is,[176] this clever craftsman must have worked for Petitot; for another very fine example of the same kind of work, a wreath of enamelled flowers finely modelled and painted, surrounds a miniature by Petitot in the possession of the Earl of Dartrey. [176] Mariette, _Abecedario_, IV, p. 133. To sum up the characteristic styles of seventeenth-century ornament which we have endeavoured to describe, the first feature is the general preference for precious stones, and especially diamonds, and the use of the "pea-pod" ornament for displaying them. From this style, practised by Marchant and many others, we pass, secondly, to the "Schwarzornamente" or "silhouette" designs of Le Blon and Toutin employed for champlevé enamel. Thirdly comes the development of naturalistic flower designs, and the application of these to the painted "Louis Treize" enamel evolved by Toutin, and perfected by Petitot, Vauquer, and Légaré. [Illustration: Jean Toutin in his workshop, firing an enamelled jewel.] CHAPTER XXXI SEVENTEENTH CENTURY JEWELLERY (_continued_) ENGLAND, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY