One or two of the peculiarities of artists in representing jewellery are worthy of being mentioned. It is to be observed that the presence or absence of gilding on jewellery often serves to distinguish between German and Flemish paintings. Holbein almost always employed gold upon golden objects; but in the works of Mabuse, so rich in elaborate detail, paint alone suffices to produce the effect. The artists of those days possessed a marvellous facility for imitating the brilliance of gold by colour alone. In examining the jewellery of sixteenth and seventeenth century portraits numbers of what appear to be black stones are frequently to be seen. These were evidently intended to represent diamonds. From early times, when the custom existed of improving, as it was considered, the colour of all stones by the use of foils, diamonds--the old stones of Golconda and Brazil, different in colour and quality from the diamonds of to-day--were usually backed with a black varnish composed of lamp-black and oil of mastic. This _tinctura_, or colouring of the diamond, which is alluded to by Cellini, would account for the intense and clear blacks and whites used by the artists of the time in depicting that precious stone. In the work of some of the finest painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so masterly is the handling, that in the contemplation of broad effects one may fail to notice how much detail the artists were able to combine with such breadth. In fact the detail they displayed is hardly less precise than that of the earlier painters. Mr. Davies[190] has some interesting remarks to make on the different modes of depicting jewellery adopted by first-class painters--by the one who paints it in detail and the other who treats it with freedom. "The first paints you, touch by touch, his chains, his bracelets, his tiara, link by link, and gem by gem, with precision so great that if you called in a fairly capable goldsmith, of little or no intelligence, he would use them as a pattern and produce you an exact facsimile. The second obtains his result by summarized knowledge, letting his line lose itself and find itself again, a flash on a link, a sparkle on a gem suggesting all to the eye with a completeness which is fully as complete as the literal word for word translation of the other man. Call in a really intelligent goldsmith to this work and he would find it quite as easy as, or even easier than, the other to understand and reproduce from, but it would not do to make a tracing from, nor give as a pattern to one of his unintelligent apprentices." [190] Davies (G. S.), _Frans Hals_, p. 88.