Excerpt from Medieval Gem Engraving<br><br>It 18 at first sight apparent, rom two considerations, that the(genu1ne Gothic artists never attempted engraving upon hard stones.\ The first, and this an argument of the greatest weight, is that no gems are to be met with exhibiting purely Gothic designs. We know from the innumerable seals pre served, both official and personal, many of them most elabo rately drawn and artistically executed, what would be the designs that gems engraved by a hand contemporary with these seals must necessarily have exhibited for, as the analogy of the two arts requires, the same hand would have cut the intagli in stone and the seals in metal. Thus at a later time we find that the famous gem-engravers of the Revival, such as I] Greco, Matteo del N assaro, and Valerio Belli, were also die sinkers. Any gems, therefore, engraved either in Italy, France, or Germany between the years 900 and 1453 would necessarily present such subjects as saints in ecclesiastical or monastic costume, knights arrayed in the armour of their times, and, above all, architectural embellishments, canopies and niches, the customary deco rations of the mediaeval seals in metal.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.