A form of art which flourished exceedingly at Ragusa was goldsmith’s work. The goldsmiths and silversmiths of Dalmatia were famous, and many of the church treasuries in the country are very rich and splendid. That of the cathedral of Ragusa is one of the finest, in spite of the earthquake and the depredations of the freebooters after that calamity. Its two most interesting pieces, however, are not by natives of Ragusa. One is an enamelled casket enclosing the skull of St. Blaize. The groundwork of copper is concealed by twenty-four plaques of metal, on which enamel and filigree are laid; each of them, save four triangular plaques on the top, contains a medallion with the head of a saint in the centre, the name written in Lombardic letters. The surface not covered by the plaques is filled in with the most delicate enamels of flowers, fruit, leaves, pearls, insects, and scroll work. This reliquary is said by Resti to have been brought to Ragusa in 1026, but Graham Jackson proves it to belong to two widely different periods. The medallions are Byzantine work of the eleventh or twelfth century, whereas the intervening scrolls of flowers, &c., are of a much later date, and, in fact, Jackson discovered the inscription in a corner of the lower edge: “Fran^{co}. Ferro Venet^o. F. A. 1694.”[524] Another treasure is the curious silver-gilt basin and ewer attributed to Giovanni Progonović, a jeweller of the fifteenth century, but more probably foreign work, as the plate mark—an N within a circle—is not that of Ragusa.[525] The ewer contains imitations of bunches of dried leaves and grasses in silver, and the basin is strewn with ferns and leaves, in the midst of which creep lizards, eels, snakes, and other animals, all wrought in silver, and enamelled and tinted so as to deceive one into believing them real. It is an extraordinary piece of work, but more strange than beautiful. It is probably not older than the early seventeenth century. There are many other specimens of the jeweller’s art in this collection, reliquaries, chalices, cups, &c., mostly by natives, and some of them very handsome.