In the Spring of 2002 a magnificent collection of works of art, including the
largest private holding of Renaissance jewellery in Britain, will go on permanent
exhibition in London. Welcoming the news, The Times said in an editorial, "Renaissance
men and women knew a thing or two about embellishment … many of the period's
great names did their time in goldsmiths' workshops, including Lorenzo Ghiberti,
Filippo Brunelleschi and Sandro Botticelli". These beautiful treasures were
assembled by Sir Julius Wernher, who himself did time in the gold trade as one
of the first gold and diamond magnates in South Africa in the late 19th century.
His collection has now been lent to the British nation for 125 years.
The show is a timely reminder of the verve, the intellectual and artistic energy
that was released in Florence and then through all Italy early in the 15th century.
After generations in which artists and goldsmiths had largely served the church,
they could suddenly go in pursuit of reality instead of a religious idea. Patronage
was no longer ecclesiastical, but largely secular. Medieval
art had been a flat, stylised depiction of things; Renaissance artists went back
to the ancient technical skills for creating a harmony based on the reality of
anatomy and perspective. As The Times editorial points out, many of the greatest
Renaissance artists and sculptors were initially apprenticed as goldsmiths and
one can add to that list such names as Donatello, Verocchio, Cellini
and, from northern Europe, Albrecht Durer.
Even before this unleashing of artistic talent, the gold business in the Italian
city states of Florence, Genoa and Venice was already well established; their
mints issued gold coins,
their banking houses with great names like Medici, Bardi and Peruzzi had a network
of agencies throughout Europe - and many of Europe's kings and princes were in
debt to them. The bankers and wealthy merchants provided the patronage under which
artists, sculptors and goldsmiths could thrive (though they often had great difficulty
getting paid).
This commercial prosperity also underwrote an era of discovery, the search for
new routes to the east and ultimately, with Christopher Columbus, west to the
New World. The Portuguese were already pushing down the west coast of Africa by
the 1440s, tapping directly gold production from the 'Gold Coast' that had previously
come across the Sahara. The Portuguese issued a new cruzado coin of African gold
in 1457. Sicily was also bringing in African gold in exchange for wheat. By 1488
the Portuguese had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, opening the sea route to India
and the Far East. Just four years later Columbus discovered the Americas. Thus
at the same moment new sources of supply for gold and silver were found in Central
and South America, while direct access was achieved to major markets in the east.
Gold coin was minted in Seville in Spain, in England (where Henry VII had launched
an early version of the sovereign
in 1489) and, as usual, the Venice mint was busy with ducats.
Europe's goldsmiths were busy too. The combination of increased supplies and wealthy
new patrons brought an enormous expansion of their workshops, not just for gold
work but for silver plate and tableware. "The 16th century was a period of
dramatic shifts of emphasis in the field of goldsmiths' design," says J.
F. Howard in his book Virtuoso Goldsmiths. "The Renaissance remained the
dominant influence … the century begins with Italy as the centre from which
knowledge of and taste for antiquity was diffused throughout western Europe …
(but) the Orient exercised powerful influence, particularly in goldsmiths' designs."
Italy led the way with the best workshops in Florence, Rome, Milan and Venice
and famous goldsmiths such as Benvenuto Cellini (see Renaissance
Goldsmiths), Manno di Sburri and Antonio Gentile. However, by 1540 the talent
was increasingly to be found north of the Alps, working at the French court in
Paris, or in Antwerp, Nürnberg and Augsberg. The 'virtuoso goldsmith' in
Nürnberg was Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508-1584) who was renowned for a remarkable
sense of scale and perspective in crafting gold and silver. As J. F. Howard remarks
in Virtuoso Goldsmiths, "The goldsmiths … showed outstanding mastery
of sculpture in precious metals". They were equally skilled at engraving
them.
The goldsmiths were also mobile, moving from country to country, either to the
court of a potential patron or to the workshop of a master goldsmith. Goldsmiths
could be flexible because they had only to take their hand tools with them. Italian
workshops seem to have been full of young German goldsmiths learning their trade,
while Cellini, perhaps the greatest of all goldsmiths, was summoned to the French
court in 1540 to work for King Francis I (the royal summons was quite convenient,
since it got Cellini, a boisterous fellow, out of prison for some escapade). He
spent five years in France, sculpting while he was there the gold salt cellar
for which he is famous. "It was oval in form, standing about two-thirds of
a cubit (12 inches/30 centimetres), wrought of solid gold and worked entirely
with the chisel," Cellini wrote in his autobiography. The salt cellar, now
in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches museum, is perhaps the supreme triumph of a Renaissance
goldsmith.
The achievements of goldsmiths in Europe throughout the Renaissance period may
be judged from the fact that the treasuries of kings and queens (such as Elizabeth
I in England) were primarily in gold and silver plate, rather than coin. And on
their peregrinations around their kingdoms they took much of it with them in their
baggage trains. Kings and queens prided themselves on the goldsmiths who worked
for their court, for their jewels or plate were items of prestige when they met
other rulers.
Between 1400 and 1600 the Renaissance transformed European culture and society.
In the first hundred years the revolution was in ideas, in painting and in sculpture,
but after 1500, moving into the period often called the High Renaissance, the
new flow of gold and silver from the Americas transformed the goldsmiths' world
too. Over 150 tonnes (4.8 million ounces) of gold was officially imported into
Spain from the New World between 1503 and 1600; much of it went through the goldsmiths'
workshops. One other new invention helped them - printing. For the first time
books on jewellery designs were printed and distributed throughout Europe. Cellini
himself wrote a goldsmith's manual, "Upon which," says jewellery historian
Graham Hughes, "any modern workshop could still base its activity".
Good testimony to the impact of the Renaissance on the gold trade.
The work of Renaissance goldsmiths, in both gold and silver, came to be seen in
many Europe museums. Cellini's gold salt cellar is in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches
museum. In Dresden the Albertinum
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen has its famous Green Vault collection of European
goldsmiths' work, and in Paris Musée
des Arts Decoratifs has a collection of jewellery and silverware, as does
the Victoria & Albert
Museum in London. The new exhibition of Renaissance jewellery from the collection
of Sir Julius Wernher will be reviewed by GoldAvenue when it opens in 2002.
See also: library/history
and library/jewellery.