DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0105
GOLD AND SILVER WORK 73
of hunting out some rare and elegant trifles for
her use.1
The commissions with which Zorzo Brognolo, the
Mantuan envoy at Venice, was charged, were still
more varied. Silks and velvets of Oriental manu-
facture, brocades patterned over with leopards and
doves and eagles, perfumes, Murano glass, silver and
niello work, very fine Rheims linen for the Marquis’s
shirts, even finer and more delicate than the pattern
which she encloses—these are some of the things
which he must procure without a moment’s delay.
Often, indeed, faithful Zorzo found it no easy task to
satisfy the demands of his impatient young mistress.
Skilled goldsmiths and engravers were slow to move
and apt to put off commissions and linger over the
work in a way that was very trying to Isabella’s
patience. “ If the bracelets we ordered months ago
are not here till the summer is over and we no longer
wear our arms bare, they will be of no use,” she writes
on one occasion when the Jewish goldsmith, Ercole
Fedeli of Ferrara, had failed to execute her order
punctually. Another time the same artist kept her
waiting four years for a pair of silver bracelets, and
would, she declared, never have finished them in
her lifetime if Duke Alfonso had not thrown him
into the Castello dungeon! But the work when it
came was so exquisitely finished that Isabella had
to forgive him and own that no other goldsmith
in the world was his equal. And certainly the
scabbard which Ercole worked in niello for Caesar
Borgia, now in South Kensington Museum, and the
sword of state which he made for the Marquis
1 II Lusso di Isabella d’Este, A. Luzio in Nuova Antologia, 1896,
p. 453.
of hunting out some rare and elegant trifles for
her use.1
The commissions with which Zorzo Brognolo, the
Mantuan envoy at Venice, was charged, were still
more varied. Silks and velvets of Oriental manu-
facture, brocades patterned over with leopards and
doves and eagles, perfumes, Murano glass, silver and
niello work, very fine Rheims linen for the Marquis’s
shirts, even finer and more delicate than the pattern
which she encloses—these are some of the things
which he must procure without a moment’s delay.
Often, indeed, faithful Zorzo found it no easy task to
satisfy the demands of his impatient young mistress.
Skilled goldsmiths and engravers were slow to move
and apt to put off commissions and linger over the
work in a way that was very trying to Isabella’s
patience. “ If the bracelets we ordered months ago
are not here till the summer is over and we no longer
wear our arms bare, they will be of no use,” she writes
on one occasion when the Jewish goldsmith, Ercole
Fedeli of Ferrara, had failed to execute her order
punctually. Another time the same artist kept her
waiting four years for a pair of silver bracelets, and
would, she declared, never have finished them in
her lifetime if Duke Alfonso had not thrown him
into the Castello dungeon! But the work when it
came was so exquisitely finished that Isabella had
to forgive him and own that no other goldsmith
in the world was his equal. And certainly the
scabbard which Ercole worked in niello for Caesar
Borgia, now in South Kensington Museum, and the
sword of state which he made for the Marquis
1 II Lusso di Isabella d’Este, A. Luzio in Nuova Antologia, 1896,
p. 453.