International studio (49.1913)

The Leland Resolutions

THE LELAND RESOLUTIONS
BY WM. ASPENWALL BRADLEY
^-^^^■ECENTLY was presented to Mr.
I Erancis L. Leland, of New York,
r<; >• V • ‘ laSu •
by the trustees of the Metropoli-
HW jy’ tan Museum of Art in that city,
a sc't °f resolutions acknowledg-
ing his gift to the institution of
twelve hundred shares of the
capital stock of the New York County National
Bank, and declaring him a benefactor of the Mu-
seum. The result is a notable achievement in one
of the most neglected of the so-called “minor”
arts—that of illumination.
It is the work of Mr. Thomas Maitland Cleland,
an artist whose taste as a designer of typographic
ornament has long made his name familiar to critics
and connoisseurs of fine printing. He is a close
student of the French and Italian Renaissance,
and in the present instance it is from the earliest
and purest period of the former, as exemplified by
the splendid sixteenth-century choir screen of
Limoges Cathedral, that, to accord with the spirit
of the French Old Style type employed in the text
of the Resolutions, he has derived the graceful
forms and antastic motives of his elaborate gold-
illuminated border enclosing the letter-press.
The architectural treatment of foliage, with
urns, lanterns, volutes and pedestals, is here
varied in the usual manner by the introduction of
ribbons, pendants, horns of plenty and trophies
of artists’ implements, as well as of Cupids, dol-
phins, emblematic birds and grotesque masks of
fauns and satyrs. But these conventional ele-
ments are combined with unusual skill, and the
drawing is at once refined and spirited.
Interest, however, centers less in the design
itself than in its novel execution. This is in the
style known as “brown-gold chiaroscuro,” and
was much used by the Italian illuminators of the
Renaissance in making frames for their minia-
tures. The Croatian, Giulio Clovio,who worked at
Rome during the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury, is the representative artist of the school, and
the New York Public Library possesses an admir-
able example of his work and of that of his pupils,
in the “Towneley Lectionary ” described by J. W.
Bradley in his book about Clovio. It contains six
full-page miniatures, each of which is surrounded
by a broad gold frame, so modeled in the flat as to
give the appearance of full relief. Analysis of
these aided him in producing what is probably
the first piece of genuine brown gilt illumination

of exquisite texture in all its details, for nearly
four centuries.
Having constructed his design, Mr. Cleland
traced it upon the fine sheet of vellum obtained
from London, and covered it with a flat wash
made by mixing gold powder with yellow. On
this ground he proceeded to model up the orna-
ment in the shadows with brown. It is here that
the resemblance to the true miniature technique is
most marked. For the color was applied in series
and hatchings of fine lines with the smallest of
brushes under a magnifying glass.
The lights were flecked in with pure gold in
the same manner, and completed the modeling.
When it was done, the decoration glowed forth
from the smooth, satiny surface of the vellum with
that sparkling vivacity and that depth and rich-
ness of relief which the magic play of light and
shade gives to some lovely specimen of the gold-
smith’s art. Indeed, so crisp and sharp is the
execution—so bold and vigorous, too, in spite of
the minuteness of the scale and the method—that
it seems chiseled rather than painted, and suggests
an ornate masterpiece in bronze gilt or ormoulu.
In addition to the border, there is a superb
initial “ R,” which begins the word “ Resolved,” at
the opening of the second paragraph. It stands
in actual raised relief on a blue ground wrought
with delicate arabesques of gold and darker blue,
and surrounded by a square brown-gold frame,
which is, perhaps, modeled with a greater mastery
of the method, and a finer finish, than any other
detail of the illumination. The raising of the let-
ter constituted a special problem, and was accom-
plished by building up a ground with a chalk com-
position, and then covering it with gold leaf bur-
nished to the last degree of brightness. The
initial, therefore, is the high light for the whole
composition, which is terminated, at the bottom,
by the integral introduction into the border of the
museum’s seal. This, held in place by a pair of
inverted dolphins, with foliated fins and with
winged Cupids astride their curving tails, has been
charmingly reconstructed by Mr. Cleland, and
executed by him in camaieu-gris, or grisaille.
It took Mr. Cleland five months to complete the
work, exclusive of time spent on preliminary inves-
tigations and studies. The text of the Resolutions
is printed in the Cadmus, or French Old Style type
adopted by the Museum for its official publica-
tions, and both the typographical arrangement
and the presswork were executed by Mr. Walter
Gilliss, under the direction of Mr. Henry W. Kent,
assistant secretary of the Metropolitan.

LIX