Three Byzantine Ceramics (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore)

Author(s): Richard H. Randall, Jr.

Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 110, No. 785 (Aug., 1968), pp. 461-464
Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/875673 .
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 SHORTER
With the knowledge that ceder-green is chrysocolla, the mean-
ing of the name is clear, as the word chrysocolla is derived from
Greek and means, literally, an adhesive for gold. Both malachite
and the mineral still known as chrysocolla are reputed to have
been used as a cold solder for gold during the medieval period.
The OxfordEnglishDictionarycontains numerous examples which
show that solderwas often spelt without 1; thus it is probable that
is a corrupt form of solder-green
ceder-green and that its true meaning
was forgotten by the time chrysocolla became an obsolete pig-
ment in the mid-seventeenth century.
Another colour name which has received scant attention is
general;again it is a name which may be found in sixteenth and
early seventeenth-century sources, but not in later works. Unlike
ceder-green,the name generalis mentioned in the OxfordEnglish
Dictionarywhere it is described doubtfully as 'a ground colour' and
it is grouped with other words derived from the Latin genus.
However, general was undoubtedly a yellow pigment and that
fact points to the possibility that the colour name comes from
the same Indo-European root as many English and foreign
words connected with yellow or gold. A foreign word comparable
with generalis the Spanish genuli,which appears as the name of a
yellow pigment in the seventeenth-century works on painting by
Palomino and Pacheco. The English and Spanish names are
equally difficult to interpret and both became obsolete at the same
period.
Certain references to general suggest that it was associated with
massicot, which has, since the eighteenth century anyway, been
identified as lead monoxide. In The Art of Drawing with the Pen
(16o6) Henry Peacham refers to 'masticot or general' as if the
names are synonymous, yet both names are listed without such
an indication in several other sources, Bodleian MS. Ashmole
1494, B.M. MSS. Stowe 680, and Sloane 2092. A price list in
V. & A. MS. 86.L.65 includes general at three shillings and
fourpence per pound whereas massicot is shown at exactly twice
the price for the same quantity, therefore implying that the
pigments were not identical. Distinct names may have been
applied to different degrees of lead monoxide, as that pigment
could vary in depth of colour according to the length of time it
was heated. However, that would not account for a great differ-
ence in price between massicot and general, and it seems pos-
sible that one name refers to lead monoxide and the other to lead
stannate. Documentary evidence of instructions for making the
latter, an oxide of lead and tin, was found in foreign language
sources by Mrs Merrifield who undertook research into the history
of painting materials in the nineteenth century, but the yellow
received no further attention until it was identified through the
scientific examination of paintings during the present century,
and since then a yellow which correspondsto the colour identified
as lead stannate has been observed on paintings dating from the
fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Existence of a tin-yellow was not unknown in England in the
seventeenth century, for a paper on artists' colours in Philosophi-
cal Transactions(1686) contains the statement that massicot is
'an improper calx of tin'. The writer had taken the definition from
De Lithiasi, a treatise written by the physician, Van Helmont,
during the first half of the seventeenth century. Certainly,
some writers remembered that a yellow pigment was at one
time made from tin, but they do not answer the question as
to which name was applied to the pigment when it was in
current use. Because changes in the meaning of colour names have
occurred so often in the past, one must accept the possibility that
massicot was once used for lead stannate and was later transferred
to lead monoxide. However, it is significant that lead stannate has
been observed in paintings which date from a period preceding
the early seventeenth century and that the name generalis like-
wise to be found in sixteenth and very early seventeenth-century
NOTICES
works; both the pigment and the colour name became obsolete
at the same time. In this case, evidence is still required to deter-
mine the exact meaning of the name.
Correct identification of colour names is important not only
in supplementing work done in the scientific examination of
paintings, but also in helping to make references to painting
materials more easily understood. Research into the meaning of
names is best rewarded by close examination of practical works,
which were not necessarily written by eminent painters, but
information gained in that way may be usefully applied to works
of a more general nature, such as Hilliard's treatise, and may also
help to explain brief referencesto colours in documents relating to
other important painters.
Recent Museum Acquisitions
ThreeByzantineCeramics
(WaltersArt
Gallery,Baltimore)
BY RICHARD H. RANDALL, JR
THREE Byzantine ceramics added to the Walters Art Gallery
collections this year have allowed a broadening of the collection
in a direction hitherto quite difficult. Though many fragments of
Byzantine dishes were found at Corinth, Sparta, and Constan-
tinople many years ago, complete dishes have been rarely avail-
able. The new techniques of skin diving have brought to light a
number of shipwrecks in the Adriatic, Aegean, and Mediter-
ranean Seas in the past several years in which have been dis-
covered classical remains, sculpture, oil jars, and recently a
number of groups of Byzantine glazed ware.
The dishes usually recovered from the shipwrecks are of the
type most common in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and
generally described as early sgraffitoware. The body is red with a
whitish slip and a thin glaze, through which the designs are
drawn. Two of the Walters Art Gallery pieces are flat dishes with
a vestigial rim foot and a sharply upturned outer edge. The first
of these (Fig.61) is decorated with a hawk or kite grasping a
stylized branch within a decorative border. He is strongly and
broadly drawn, the lines of the figure appearing brown against
the off-white of the glaze. The second dish (Fig.59) shows a
leopard rampant amid sprigs of foliage. It is more delicately
drawn and the dish has patches of purple grey in the glaze from
the firing. Each is approximately 9- inches in diameter.
The third Walters example (Fig.6o) is a deep bowl with a rim
foot. It is incised with a design probably derived from Persian
pottery of a tree-of-life motif within a concentric design of a star,
a rosette, and a circle. The glaze is again off-white, but slightly
greyish, and the rim of the bowl retains considerable evidence of
sea life attached to it.
The workshop that produced this particular group of pottery
was probably on the mainland of Asia Minor, though no excava-
tions have identified specific kiln sites. While some thirteen pieces
of the find that I have examined reveal a repetition of animal and
plant motifs, there is a continual liveliness in the drawing, whether
the motifs are of Persian derivation or more purely Byzantine, as
in the case of the animals. The present find was made in a wreck
off the northern Dodecanese Islands at the south edge of the
461I
 RECENT MUSEUM
Aegean Sea, from which a considerable number of pieces were
recovered. Three very similar examples, perhaps from another
find, are at the Cleveland Museum, and while two show a close
parallel with the bird and tree-of-life examples, the third has no
border design and shows a combat of a hawk and a rabbit. The
most recent evidence from the excavations at Constantinople
indicates that this ware must date in the twelfth century, probably
around A.D.I 140.
(WaltersArt Gallery,
EarlyBookbindings
Baltimore)
BY DOROTHY MINER
SINCE the extensive exhibition of ten years ago, 'The History of
Bookbinding A.D.525-1950', the Walters Art Gallery has been on
the lookout for important examples of early bookbindings which
would fill gaps in our collection in that field. Some of those added
during the last eighteen months or so are illustrated here with
brief notes.
The first is a collection of five separate works, printed by various
presses in France, Italy, and Germany, at dates ranging from
1498 to 1520 - for the most part tracts or poems on theological
topics. The board-covered volume has a sturdy half-binding of
pigskin impressedin black with the name of the first author of the
series: Aurelius Prudentius, the date of the binding, 1529, and
the armorial block of the owner, Johann Hess, a Protestantdivine
from Breslau (Fig.63). This block, executed for Hess in 1525, is
among the earliest armorial owners' stamps to be designed for a
book-collector. The binding is the work of a Breslau binder,
known by his initials as Master H. B.
The second book is the Sacrdde LouisXV Roy deFrance... dans
I'Vglise de Reims, Paris [1723] - the magnificent extra large folio
official publication recording the coronation ceremonies of the
12-year-old Louis XV. Most of the presentation copies of this
work were bound in morocco impressed with very large dentelle
plaques, with the ticket of Antoine-Michel Padeloup who became
binder to the King in 1733. This example (Fig.62) is exceptional
in that the red morocco is tooled with small tools in a design of
strapwork, helixes, pointille flowers, etc. which still has a late
seventeenth-century character and, in fact, resembles the earliest
bindings that can be attributed to Padeloup around 1725.
As Mr Howard Nixon has shown, the superb bindings tooled
in gold with a host of little Chinese figures, birds, animals and
rococo forms, and signed with the initials I. B., were executed by
a German bookbinder, John Baumgarten. He migrated from his
native country to London in the I76O'sand lived there until his
death in 1782. His skill was renowned and he specialized in
elegant bindings in the 'Chinese taste' in vogue at the time. This
volume (Fig.58) was bound at the order of Charles Watson-
second Marquis of Rockingham (1730-I782),
Wentworth,
in
Whig who was outspoken in support of the American colonies
George III's day. The book is an excessively rare work - Mari-
ette's 1757 publication of engravings after the seventeenth-
century water-colours of Roman frescoes made by Pietro Santi
Bartoli. The engravings were skilfully painted to imitate the
water-colours and the plates were destroyed after only thirty
copies had been produced. This, together with two volumes of
Hamilton's Antiquitiesalso bound by Baumgarten and now in the
Pierpont Morgan Library, comes from Major J. R. Abbey's
collection.
462
ACQUISITIONS
Obituary
HerbertRead
NOman since Ruskin, indeed no other Englishman than Ruskin,
can have had such a deep and complex associationwith the world
of the visual arts in this country than Herbert Read nor brought
to it a wider or more humane concern with all that these arts
involve and express. Perhaps only at the moment of his death
have even his friendsbeen brought to recognize his multitudinous
services to that world. We may have to remind ourselves for
instance that this aspect of a career, which also embraced an
intense and widely branching commitment to the literary arts,
began as an AssistantKeeper in the Victoria and Albert Museum
(in the Department of Ceramics) whither he had moved from
the Treasury in 1922 at the age of 29. His first art publication
indeed derived from his work there, being a study of English
stained glass and it was this museum experience which obtained
for him in 1931 the Watson Gordon Professorshipof Fine Art
at Edinburgh University. So although he would not in later
years have defined his contribution to the understanding of art
as an academic one, his qualifications to write and speak were
formed within a great general collection, daily in touch with
works of every kind and in the company of such distinguished
scholars of the period as Bernard Rackham and Eric Maclagan.
Because of his personal modesty, because so few great men can
have been so unready to speak of, as distinct from declaring,
himself, his awareness of the nature and values of scholarship
and his support of scholarly enterprisemay be hidden from those
who did not directly witness or benefit from it. The editor has
written elsewhere of his place in the history of this Magazine. As
a publisher, in the firm of Routledge & Kegan Paul, he was res-
ponsible for numerous art-historical publications, and such
authors as Frederick Antal, Erna Auerbach, W. G. Constable,
and Arnold Hauser are among those who have had reason to
acknowledge his devoted attention to their studies and in some
cases even more significantaid and encouragement.
At the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art we enjoyed in
the last six years of his life not only his unfailing service, but also
the pleasuresof his presence which in spite of Herbert's reticence
was something most positive. Simply, everyone enjoyed him being
there. Not only was he, unlike myself, present at the moment of
the Foundation's conception in Washington, but did, I believe,
by his personal authority secure for it on that day a firm root.
And thereafter at every crux and point of emergency he not only
made himself available but brought resolution and reinforcement
and a witness for the highest intellectual standards. And when it
was a matter of mundane administrativedecisions his judgement
was sensible and charitable; his sense of practicality was remark-
able in someone so committed to the freedom of the imagination.
He was indeed an ideal Trustee, which makes it the more regret-
table that the Tate Gallery had only so recently chosen to employ
a him in this role.
His contribution to English artistic life in this way - and how
many more institutions did he serve - would alone have deserved
honour, but of course his influence was made vastly more exten-
sive by other means. In the 193o's, 40's and 50's he did more than
any other man to transformthe local conditions in which art was
presented, received, and appreciated. The Meaningof Art was
through most of this period the most effective primer of appreci-
ation in English and has, I suspect, had no successor.Art nowwas
the first genuine defence and explanation of modern art which
was comprehensive, wholehearted and intellectually refined.
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58. Bookbinding, by John Baumgarten, on a book of 1757. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.) 59. Byzantine Dish, decorated with leopard rampant. M
cm. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.)
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60. Byzantine Dish, incised with design of a tree-of-life motif within a concen- 61. Byzantine Dish, decorated with hawk or kite. Mid-twelfth century
tric design of a star, rosette and circle. Mid-twelfth century A.D. Diameter, A.D. Diameter, c.23-5 cm. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.)
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62. Bookbinding, attributed to Antoine-Michel Padeloup, on a book of 1723. 63. Bookbinding, by Master H. B., Breslau. Dated 1529. (Walters Art Gallery,
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