United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"It is n't half so extraordinary as it would be if it were true, my dear," said the Duchessa. "Oh? Non e poi vero?" murmured Emilia, and her eyes darkened with disappointment. Peter meanwhile was looking at the snuffbox, which the priest still held in his hand, and admiring its brave repousse work of leaves and flowers, and the escutcheon engraved on the lid.
"You see one sometimes makes little figures of real repoussé, half and half, done in cement and then soldered together so that they look like one piece, but it is impossible to do them well unless you have dies to press the plate into the first shape and the die always makes the same figure, though you can vary the face and twist the arms and legs about.
The designs in repousse work are evidently pendants to one another. The first represents a hunt of wild bulls. One bull, whose appearance indicates the highest pitch of fury, has dashed a would-be captor to earth and is now tossing another on his horns. A second bull, entangled in a stout net, writhes and bellows in the vain effort to escape.
Within its spacious porticoes and corridors the walls glowed with the brilliant colours of innumerable frescoes and reliefs in coloured plaster. The Cup-Bearer, the Queen's Procession, the Miniature Frescoes of the Palace Sports, stood out in all their freshness. The King and his courtiers were served in costly vessels of gold, silver, and bronze repoussé work.
The impossible handles were worthy of the blades, bulging grips between two huge balls utterly unfitted for handling; four were covered with thin gold-plate in repoussé work, and one with silver. The metal was sewn together with thin wire, and the joints had been hammered to hide them. The band consisted of two horns and three drums.
The high stone fireplace is surmounted by a portrait of Diana of Poitiers, with a crescent on her brow, and is furnished with firedogs of elaborately worked iron. The centre panel bears the arms of Admiral Bonnivet. Stained-glass windows admit a softly-tinted light. From the magnificently painted ceiling, a chandelier of brass repousse work hangs from the claws of a hovering eagle.
And the late Archbishop of Paris, the same who fell before the barricades, a martyr to Charity if not to Truth, and who seems to have had a wakeful eye on the progress of philosophic speculation, took occasion, in a preface to the Abbé Maret's "Theodicée," to declare that Lamennais' system was obnoxious to the Church, because of its opposition to the doctrine of Rational Certitude: "Tout le monde sait que le clergé de France avait repoussé le systeme de M. de Lamennais precisément
The treasury also contains some curious rococo painted vestments, apparently in water-colour on silk. To the right of the choir, in a chapel just outside the sacristy, is a reredos of repoussé silver two big angels kneeling below, and God the Father above a Madonna and Child with painted faces, the rest of the figures being in relief.
Newlyn remains quaint and fishy, though it has its little Art Gallery and its Rue des Beaux Arts. There are artistic industries also copper repoussé and enamel jewellery; a new Renaissance has come to this Cornish fishing-village its youths and maidens are learning mysteries of beautiful craft which may save them from the deadly inanities of the average British workman.
These vessels of engraved and repoussé gold and silver, some representing hunting scenes and incidents of battle, were imitated by Phoenician craftsmen, and, being exported to Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, carried Egyptian patterns and subjects into distant lands.
Word Of The Day