International studio (82.1925)

mceRnACionAL

permit them to survive their
betrayal. They were fashioned
solely to delight the heart and
the eye of man; and after they
had been used to fill his stomach,
even if to fill it with golden
wine, they were besmirched and
must be destroyed.

"The fascination of Vene-
tian glass," says Mr. Jarves, "is
that it neither rusts nor decays;
moths cannot consume it nor
time alter its shape or dim its
beauty. But the slightest mis-
hap may crush it as easily as a
butterfly's wing. . . . There is
no midway phase of esthetic
picturesqueness in slow decay
as in other art objects; no inter-

early venetian glass. left: loving cup of clear glass. right: bottle of Val between perfect Condition
opalescent glass. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum and absolute mill " Prederick

within me on seeing them." But the Mogul was IV thought glass inferior to gold and silver because

an oriental and he did not humiliate his British it is fragile; but Frederick did not love it. No

friend as Frederick IV had humiliated the Doge. lover ever thought the fragility of his mistress a

After all Jehangir had such quantities of beautiful fault. The enthusiastic collector trembles on be-

things that all any ambassador could hope to do holding its beauty, and the very shaking of his

was to satisfy his curiosity. hand endangers its existence.

In addition to their esthetic and technical How glass was first made is a doubtful ques-

value it is one of the charms of these Venetian tion, for in the very beginning the legend of

pleasantries that their fragile, delicate beauty is the accidental discovery of glass is a charming

always redolent of royalty. pleasantry too fragile to bear

Any anecdotes they recall are Venetian vase of smoky glass t^e rough shock of truth.

r i • Courtesy of tbe Brooklyn Museum o nr • • T

stones ot courts and princes. _:_ bome Phoenician merchants,

Bourgeois associations are un- IBM according to Pliny, landed on
known to them. At the mar- the shore of Behis and kindled
riage feast of the Prince of I a fire to cook their food. Find-
Mantua the guests drank their I ing no stones to support their
wine and then broke their cauldron, they took lumps of
glasses, at the prince's com- I I saltpetre from their ships; and
mand, although they were the what was their amazement to
finest products of the Murano 1 behold that when the fire
workshops. This quaint old blazed up and ignited the salt-
custom is too expensive to be I I petre on the sandy shore, a
indulged in today. But even L «ti/yl transparent liquid stream
at that time it was more than m/^^ flowed from beneath the caul-
a royal gesture. Mr. J. J. fc/m w/^B dron. Unfortunately for the
Jarves, whose collection of truth of the story, a tempera-
Venetian glass in the Metro- ture of from one thousand to
politan Museum is representa- I ■g^S fifteen hundred degrees is re-
tive of most of the important K B quired to fuse the materials of
types, explains the famous in- HHSSiH which glass is composed, and
cident in this way: the finer I with all respect to Pliny, it is
pieces of Muranese glass, he doubtful if the Phoenicians
says, are so perfect that any could have kindled such a
use debases them; and know- I W8Bhfeag»i^a*LAaa|P | fierce fire on the beach at Belus.
ing this, the Prince would not [_!_:_I However the knowledge of

one eigbteeyi

november i Q 2 $