ted 1593, as an excellent specimen of this particular branch of
design. Such tablets not unfrequently headed the first page of a
volume, and received in the centre the title of the book. The
wood-engraver is thus the legitimate successor of the older illuminator.

[Illustration: Fig. 26.]

A large demand was made on the imaginative faculties of the designers of
that day by the metal-workers, the gold and silversmiths, the jewellers,
and all connected with such decorative manufactures as the luxury of
wealth and taste calls into exertion. The name of Cellini stands
prominently forth as the inventor and fabricator of much that was
remarkable; the pages of his singular autobiography detail the peculiar
beauty of many of his designs; the Viennese collection still boasts some
of the finest of the works so described, particularly the golden
salt-cellar he made for Francis I. of France. The high art which he
brought to bear on design applied to jewellery was followed by other
artist-workmen, such as Stephanus of Paris, and Jamnitzer of Nuremberg.
The metal-workers of the latter city, and of Augsburg, had a universal
reputation at the close of the sixteenth century for their jewellery and
plate, particularly the latter. They kept in employ the best designers
of the day, and such men as Hans Holbein, Albert Aldegraef, Virgilius
Solis, and a host known as the "little masters," supplied the demand
with apparent abundance, but it could only be satisfied by the
multiplication of these designs by means of the engraver's art. Hence we
have at this period, and the early part of the seventeenth century, an
abundance of small engravings, comprising a vast variety of designs for
all articles of ornament; and from them we have selected, in Figs. 27
and 28, two specimens of those intended to be used in the manufacture of
the pendent jewels, then so commonly worn on the breast of rich ladies.
These jewels were sometimes elaborately modelled with scriptural and
other scenes in their centre, chased in gold, enriched by enamel
colours, and resplendent with jewels. The famed "Gruene Gewoelbe" at
Dresden have many fine examples, in the Louvre are others, and some few
of a good kind are to be seen in the Museum at South Kensington. The
portraits of the age of Francis I. and our Queen Elizabeth, frequently
represent ladies in a superfluity of jewellery, of a most elaborate
character. The portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, in our National
Portrait G