Stained glass, most commonly found in church windows, involves small, flat pieces of colored glass that are shaped, arranged in images, and attached together with pieces of lead. Limoges even made many works for the mass market. The Byzantines were expert enamel artists, but the French city of Limoges also became renowned for its enamel production. If translucent, textures worked into the underlying metal could create different effects of light, like facets on a modern-day diamond. Enamels can be either translucent or opaque. Later methods allow for more complex scenes with color blending on curved surfaces. By contrast, champlevé enamel, a technique using gilded copper, involved hammering depressions in the metal that were then filled with powdered glass. The treasures found in the Sutton Hoo and Staffordshire hoards, as well as in the grave of the Frankish King Childeric, included numerous examples of cloisonné garnets and blue enamels set side-by-side. The earliest medieval examples used the cloisonné technique, which involved creating small cells out of thin gold pieces and then filling each cell with a single color. In some techniques, the image was colored enamel and the background was made from metal in other methods and styles, it was the backgrounds that appeared in colored enamel, while the figures appeared in engraved metal. There are several different methods of enameling, depending on the time period, complexity of the design, and the type of metal involved. 1200 CE, gilt copper, champlevé enamel over wood core, via Art Institute of ChicagoĮnamel is powdered, colored glass fused to metal. Most notably, enamel often appeared side-by-side with gemstones and minerals in medieval artwork. They serve many of the same aesthetic and symbolic functions. Although all three are types of colored glass, rather than minerals, gems, and jewels, we can think of them as gemstone substitutes. Stained glass, mosaics, and enamels abound in medieval artwork. Gemstone Substitutes: Stained Glass, Mosaics, Enamels Jeweled cross mosaic at Sant’Apollinare in Classe, photo by Carole Raddato, Ravenna, Italy, c. Instead, the stones that appeared in medieval artwork were typically cabochons - rounded in shape and polished to a high shine. The practice of cutting facets into gemstones for greater sparkle did not come about until the later Middle Ages. The Art of Gem Cutting Bloodstone cameo with Saint George, Byzantine, 11th century, via the Cleveland Museum of Art Jeweled crosses, like the one shown above, were also very popular in the earlier Middle Ages, as they represented Christ’s triumph over death on the cross. This is because pilgrims typically left such offerings behind at shrines they had visited, and these objects often became physically part of reliquaries or religious statues at a later point. Reliquaries, in particular, often drip with luxurious jewels. They appeared not only in crowns and high-status jewelry, as we might expect but also on precious religious objects. Their color, shimmer, and rarity all enhanced the appearance and prestige of any object. Gemstones in Medieval Artwork Ceremonial Cross of Count Liudolf, shortly after 1038, German (possibly Lower Saxony), gold: worked in repoussé cloisonné enamel intaglio gems pearls wood core, via Cleveland Museum of ArtĪlthough many have been removed in the modern era, it was once common to find precious and semiprecious gemstones and minerals decorating all sorts of medieval artwork.
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