RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT.
the work of Enguerand le Prince; the heads are grand, and the poses of the
figures call to mind
the works of Albert Diirer.
The grisailles, which ornamented the windows in the houses of the nobility,
and even of the
bottigeoisie, although small, were executed with an admirable delicacy, and
in drawing and grouping
leave little to be desired.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century the art began to decline, the numerous
glass-painters
found themselves without employment, and the celebrated Bernard de Palissy,
who had been brought
up to the trade, left it to engage in another presenting greater difficulties,
but which eventually
secured him the highest reputation.  To him, however, we are indebted for
the charming grisailles
representing the story of Cupid and Psyche, from the designs of Raffaelle,
which formerly decorated
the Chateau of Ecouen, the residence of his great patron the Constable Montmorency.
Renaissance ornament penetrated into Germany at an early period, but was
absorbed into the
hearts of the people but slowly, until the spread of books and engravings
quickened its general
acceptation. From an early period there had been a steady current of artists
leaving Germany and
Flanders to study in the great Italian ateliers. Among them, men like Roger
of Bruges, who spent
much of his life in Italy, and died in 1464,-Hemskerk, and Albert Diirer,
more especially influenced
their countrymen.  The latter, who in many of his engravings showed a perfect
apprehension of the
conditions of Italian design, leaning now to the Gothic manner of his master
Wohlgemuth, and now
to the Raffaellesque simplicity of Marc' Antonio. The spread of the engravings
of the latter, however,
in Germany, unquestionably conduced to the formation of the taste of men
who, like Peter Vischer,
first brought Italian plastic art into fashion in Germany.  Even at its best
the Renaissance of
Germany is impure-her industrious affection for difficulties of the hand,
rather than of the head,
soon led her into crinkum-crankums; and strap-work, jewelled forms, and complicated
monsters, rather
animated than graceful, took the place of the refined elegance of the early
Italian and French
arabesques.


Arabesque by Theodor de Bry, one of the " P tits Maltres " of Germany
(1598), in imitalion of Italian work, but
introducing strap-work, caricatire, and jewelled forms.
It may be well now to turn from the Fine to the Industrial Arts, and to trace
the manifestation
of the revival in the designs of contemporary manufactures. From the unchanging
and unchangeable
nature of vitreous and ceramic products, no historical evidence of style
can be more complete and
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