USE IN ARMORIAL PAINTING

escutcheon of any person entitled to bear arms, together with the minor accessories, as the crest, and, in some cases, the supporters. This study of "honorary arms" is of value to the historian and genealogist; but to the artist it is nothing, it is without interest, because of the positive rules which decide in advance

and from other than artistic reasons the juxtaposition of the different tinctures;1 blue and red, or red and black, with gold or silver charged upon either, - combinations of crude colors and metals which cannot be altered, either in character or in proportion, to suit the requirements of the design. Heraldic devices

(From Bouton)

are more supportable in glass because of the play and glow of color possible in that material (see Chapters IX, XVIII). Thus in Fig. 158, which shows without color 2 the escutcheon of the family D'Épinal in Lorraine, the cross is silver, the field

1 Tincture: in Armory (a branch of Heraldry) one of the colors, metals, or furs used for the field, or for the great divisions of the field, or for bearings.

2

Bearings shown without color: this is done by a conventional method adopted in the seventeenth century. A surface with vertical parallel lines

or background of the four quarters is blue, and the fleurs-de-lis are gold. This escutcheon, unusually varied and pretty in effect, is still a poor and feeble piece of decoration when painted on wood or plaster, but in mosaic of glass it has a certain interest. Those escutcheons which display counter

(From Bouton)

changing are more attractive, because it is a useful element in all flat colored decoration to break one hue into another; thus Fig. 159 is the escutcheon of the family Lezay-Marnezia of Lorraine and Bar, and is divided by a vertical line into silver and red, and the cross ancrée charged upon this escutcheon is red where it comes

on the silver, and silver where it comes on the red of the field. Under the best circumstances, however, escutcheons of arms are poor things for decoration, nor has there yet appeared a truly artistic manner of treating armorial bearings. In the later middle ages, when Heraldry

is supposed to be gules (red); with horizontal lines, azure (blue); with lines horizontal and vertical, sable (black); with points or dots, or (gold), and when left white, argent (silver).

1 Counterchanging: see definition, Chapter XVII.

USE IN ARMORIAL PAINTING

in all its forms was a living institution, escutcheons were often carved in stone or wood, with a slight relief of the bearings from the field, and perhaps with a convexly rounded surface of the escutcheon; then, in the coloring, a slightly more artistic treatment was practicable. Moreover enamelling was sometimes used, and a blue or red ground was broken up by a scroll-work of gold, so minute and delicate that it was seen to be no part of the heraldic emblazonment; but this was costly and of necessity rare.

In embroidery heraldic bearings assume a new interest. The play of color or lustre on the silky surfaces of the loose hanging, or even the smaller folds of the garment or banner upon which the embroidery was done, suffices to remove the objections as suggested above. We are not to forget, however, that heraldry was but a small part of the brilliant color decoration of the times when it was alive and useful, and that even the most ardent pursuivant-of-arms would have hesitated to make its painting the chief part of any scheme of decoration.

Chapter Twenty-One

GEM ENGRAVING AND DIE SINKING

I

N this chapter are treated two artistic industries, each of which has been of singular importance in the history of fine art.

After

the stateliest sculpture and the most elaborate and imaginative painting on a large scale, the diminutive works of the engraver in very hard substances, such as the intaglios of antiquity and the Renaissance, are of the highest value. Again, the coins struck by Grecian cities from their now lost dies, and the struck medallions of the Renaissance and of later times, are the most fascinating and the most highly esteemed works of fine art, after the great monumental works. Indeed, in the matter of our artistical education, the utmost value is to be claimed for these arts as they existed in antiquity; because the works of art so produced have come to us intact without restoration; and also

1 Struck: impressed by a die, as contrasted with what is cast or embossed by hammering. During the fifteenth century and since that time. many medallions have been cast in bronze, and it is necessary to distinguish them from those which are simply impressions of a die.

THEIR IMPORTANCE IN ART

because they are known to us in great numbers and can be compared one to another for their artistic excellence. No person can be sure of the originality of an ancient statue in a museum; with a few exceptions this may be the work of a copyist of inferior rank, and therefore the memorandum it gives us of the true nature of the original work may be misleading. On the other hand, the intaglio, the cameo, and the coin are themselves the unquestionably approved work of a definite epoch, and the modern student may compare these works of art one with another, and draw his own conclusions as to the relative importance of schools and epochs, and often of individual artists whose names are known by their signatures affixed. Under the head of gem engraving comes also so much of the lapidary's work as consists in sinking, by means of the drill or diamond point, incisions and hollows either for their own sake or to throw into relief a raised pattern, all as explained below.

The two arts of gem engraving and die-sinking differ in this, that the work of the gem engraver is in material so hard that the ordinary cutting tool cannot attack it; while the work of the die sinker, although in steel, is yet done in steel so far softened for the occasion that the hardened tool of the engraver can cut it, much as the burin cuts lines in the process of engraving, in the usual sense of that term: see Chapter XIX. Apart