FLORENTINE work. When Italy, many years past, enjoyed a state of per fect tranquillity, and the minds of all ranks of the inhabitants were under the influence of religious enthusiasm, the dif ferent orders of religious, the priests, and the nobles, each endeavoured to excel the other in the splendid decorations of churches, altars, and shrines ; the arts of the architect, the sculptor, and the paint er, were exhausted, and the pious almost at a loss how to dispose of their riches in honour of their numerous patron-saints. Mosaic work. had been invented many centuries, but some ingenious person, dis daining the comparative ease of that beau tiful and expensive manner of imitating paintings, thought of Florentine work, which is performed by inserting frag ments of precious stones in cement, so as to represent any subject usually treated by the pencil.
Keysler mentions a Carthusian monas tery, situated between Milan and Pavia, of uncommon magnificence : " the great est part of the altars in the church are adorned with elegant representations of birds, flowers, &c. in the Florentine man ner, performed by the artful position of precious stones inlaid in the marble. The convent entertains two excellent artists, a father and son, to perform these elegant works. The son, Valieri Sac, is so emi nent in these performances, that the greatest mistress of embroidery would find it difficult to equal with her needle and silk, the variety of colours and shades whiLh he expresses by sparks of agate, ruby, amethyst, cornelian, jasper, lapis lazuli, and other precious stones. The
high altar piece, together with the ta bles on each side, are entirely of this Florentine work." The Fahrica Degli Uffici, erected at Florence by Cosmo I., was appropriated in part foi the reception of various ar tists, who worked exclusively for the Grand Duke. " But among all the per formances executed here," says Keysler, " that styled Florentine work is the most elegant ; sparks of precious stones, and particles of elegant marble, are so dispos ed as to represent the objects of nature in a very beautiful and surprising man ner ; but works of this kind require a prodigious time to complete them. A flower-piece lately finished, about a foot and a half in length, and half a foot in breadth, employed the artist above eigh teen months ; and a piece of embossed work, about the size of a common sheet of paper, representing the adoration of the Eastern magi, and a group of angels in the air, has already been fbrty years in hand, and under the direction of several masters.
The late unhappy state of Italy, and the probability of still further changes, has been so fatally destructive of the arts, that Florentine work will not soon be en couraged; and i here is little doubt this laborious art will be almost lost.