designs of other artists, or of carvings made by the masters of antiquity.
For Pope Clement VII. Valerio executed a casket entirely of crystals, and this he completed in so masterly a manner that he received two thousand scudi of gold from the pontiff for its workmanship. All the Passion of our Saviour Christ was engraved on those crystals by Valerio, but with the designs of others; the casket was ultimately presented by Pope Clement to the King Francis at Marseilles, at the time when his niece was sent thither on her marriage with the Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Henry.[1] For the same Pontiff Valerio made several beautiful pattens, with a cross of crystal, which was indeed divine. He prepared dies for medals also, with the portrait of Clement on the one side and beautiful compositions on the reverse. Valerio gave so powerful an impulse to his peculiar branch of art, and caused so large an increase in the masters exercising the same, that before the sack of Rome the number of the latter, not there only but in Milan and other places, was almost incredibly great.
The medals of the twelve Cassars, with reverses after the
- ↑ “This precious treasure,” observes a modern compatriot of Valerio, after many changes of place, returned to the possession of the Medici family, and is now in the Cabinet of Gems attached to the Public Gallery of Florence. It is believed that this wonderful casket was originally intended to be used at the “Sepulchre,” in the ceremonies of the Holy Week, as there is a vase of rock-crystal in the same cabinet, which would seem to have been enclosed within the casket, and this has the form of a tomb or mortuary urn, having within itself a case of gold, enriched with the finest enamels, and bearing the motto. Sic moriendo, vita perennis. Cicognara, Storia della Scultura, has given nine of the engravings executed for this stupendous work by Valerio, omitting the rest, as believing them, but erroneously, to have been given by the Count D’Agincourt, in his great work, Les Arts decrits d’apres les Monuments, the engravings in Agincourt being from another fine work attributed to Valerio, and forming no part of those in our Medicean casket. The cover alone of the latter comprises eleven engravings, and there are in the whole twenty-four,” According to Mariette, Introduction to the second volume of the Traitè des pierres Gravees, Charles IX. of France had completed a cabinet for the reception of this and other costly works of similar kind, immediately before the troubles which distinguish that period of French history, but in the disorder which ensued these treasures were dispersed, and scarcely a gem remained on the accession of Henry IV. “Les pierres graves” observes Marriette, “comme les plus aistes a emporter et comme les plus propres a satisfaire le laxe et la cupidité furent alienées les premieres”.
