Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/184

 166 NOTICES OF NEW rUBl>lCATIONS. the more perceptible in proportion to the antiquity of the glass. It seems to liave been always painted, burnt, and leaded together, nearly as at present. " The ^Mosaic system of glass painting is admirably adapted to the nature of the material. It is however unsuited for mere picturesque effect, owing to the nature of its colouring, which being produced by broad pieces of glass whose tints can scarcely be varied either in the lights or shadows, (the latter being represented by means of the enamel brown,) imparts to works executed in this style the Hat and hard, though brilliant character of an ancient oil painting. " The revival of art in the sixteenth century, and the extraordinary efforts then achieved in oil painting, by which the hard and dry illumination of the middle ages was transformed into a beautiful picture, glowing with the varied tints of nature, and expressing to the eye, by a nice gradation of colouring, the relative position of near and distant objects, seem to have excited the ambition of the glass painters. Not content with carrying Mosaic glass painting to the highest pitch of perfection it has hitherto attained, and with borrowing the excellent drawing and composition of the oil and fresco painters, they strove to render their own art more completely an imitation of nature, and to produce in a transparent material the atmos- pheric and picturesque effects so successfully exhibited by the reflective surfaces of oil and fresco paintings. The facility of applying colour to glass with the brush, at the pleasure of the artist, afforded by the discovery of the various enamel colours, about the middle of the sixteenth century, soon led to their extensive employment. It was not however until the eighteenth century that they entirely superseded the use of coloured glasses in large works. " The introduction of enamels, though it certainly occasioned a great extension in the scale of colour in glass painting, was not without its dis- advantages. The paintings lost in transparency what they gained in variety of tint : and in proportion as their picturesque qualities were inci-eased by the substitution of enamel colouring for coloured glass, their depth of colour sensibly diminished. " The practical application of enamel colours to glass, seems always to have been conducted nearly as at present. Some of the earlier examples of Enamel painting are, however, superior in transparency to the modern. This is particularly the case with Swiss glass paintings of the seventeenth, and close of the sixteenth century ; in which enamel colours are constantly to be met with, firmly adhering to the glass in lumps of one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness, and so well fluxed in burning as to be nearly, if not quite, as transparent as pot-metal glass. I am not aware that these enamels have ever been successfully imitated, but modern chemical discoveries have been of late productive of enamel colours of very superior quality, both in tint and transparency, to those in general use during the last century, and former part of the present." Part i. p. 6. The observations which follow, relative to the tests from which the age of a glass painting is to be inferred, are worthy of attention. " In few branches of antiquarian research will a knowledge of minute