candles, and its upright stem is supported on four winged dragons. For delicate and spirited execution, together with refined gracefulness of design, it is unsurpassed by any similar work of art. Every one of the numerous little figures with which it is adorned is worthy of study for the beauty and expression of the face, and the dignified arrangement of the drapery (see fig. 3). The semi-conventional open scroll-work of branches and fruit which wind around and frame each figure or group is devised with the most perfect taste and richness of fancy, while each minute part of this great piece of metal-work is finished with all the care that could have been bestowed on the smallest article of gold jewellery. Though something in the grotesque dragons of the base recalls the Byzantine school, yet the beauty of the figures and the keen feeling for graceful curves and folds in the drapery point to a native Italian as being the artist who produced this wonderful work of art. There is a cast in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Fig. 4.—Silver Repoussé Reliefs from the Pistoia Retable.
During the 13th and 14th centuries in Italy the widespread influence of Niccola Pisano and his school encouraged the sculptor to use marble rather than bronze for his work. At this period wrought iron came into general use in the form of screens for chapels and tombs, and grills for windows. These are mostly of great beauty, and show remarkable skill in the use of the hammer, as well as power in adapting the design to the requirements of the material. Among the finest examples of this sort of work are the screens round the tombs of the Scala family at Verona, 1350–1375,—a sort of network of light cusped quatrefoils, each filled up with a small ladder (scala) in allusion to the name of the family. The most elaborate specimen of this wrought work is the screen to the Rinuccini chapel in Santa Croce, Florence, of 1371, in which moulded pillars and window-like tracery have been wrought and modelled by the hammer with extraordinary skill (see Wyatt, Metal-Work of Middle Ages). Of about the same date are the almost equally magnificent screens in Sta Trinita, Florence, and at Siena across the chapel in the Palazzo Pubblico. The main part of most of these screens is filled in with quatrefoils, and at the top is an open frieze formed of plate iron pierced, repoussé, and enriched with engraving. In the 14th century great quantities of objects for ecclesiastical use were produced in Italy. 
Fig. 5.—Wrought-iron Candle Pricket;
late 15th-century. Florentine work.The silver altar of the Florence baptistery was begun in the first half of the 14th century, and not completed till after 1477 (see Gaz. des beaux-arts, Jan. 1883). The greatest artists in metal laboured on it in succession, among them Orcagna, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, Ant. Pollaiuolo and many others. It has elaborate reliefs in repoussé work, cast canopies and minute statuettes, with the further enrichment of translucent coloured enamels. The silver altar and retable of Pistoia Cathedral (see fig. 4), and the great shrine at Orvieto, are works of the same class, and of equal importance.
Whole volumes might be devoted to the magnificent works in bronze produced by the Florentine artists of this century, works such as the baptistery gates by Ghiberti, the statues of Verrocchio, Donatello and many others, the bronze screen in Prato cathedral by Simone, brother of Donatello, in 1444–1461, and the screen and bronze ornaments of the tomb of Piero and Giovanni dei Medici in San Lorenzo, Florence, by Verrocchio, in 1472. At the latter part of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th the Pollaiuoli, Ricci and other artists devoted much labour and artistic skill to the production of candlesticks and smaller objects of bronze, such as door-knockers many of which are works of the greatest beauty. The candlesticks in the Certosa near Pavia, and in the cathedrals of Venice and Padua, are the finest examples of these. Niccolo Grossi, who worked in wrought iron under the patronage of Lorenzo dei Medici, produced some wonderful specimens of metal-work, such as the candlesticks, lanterns, and rings fixed at intervals round the outside of the great palaces (see fig. 5). The Strozzi palace in Florence and the Palazzo del Magnifico at Siena have fine specimens of these—the former of wrought iron, the latter in cast bronze. At Venice fine work in metal, such as salvers and vases, was being produced, of almost Oriental design, and in some cases the work of resident Arab artificers. In the 16th century Benvenuto Cellini was supreme for skill in the production of enamelled jewellery, plate and even larger works of sculpture (see Plon’s Ben. Cellini, 1882), and Giovanni de Bologna in the latter part of the same century inherited to some extent the skill and artistic power of the great 15th-century artists.
Spain.—From a very early period the metal-workers of Spain have been distinguished for their skill, especially in the use of the precious metals. A very remarkable set of specimens of goldsmith’s work of the 7th century are the eleven votive crowns, two crosses and other objects found in 1858 at Guarrazar, and now preserved at Madrid and in Paris in the Cluny Museum (see Du Sommerard, Musée de Cluny, 1852). Magnificent works in silver, such as shrines, altar crosses and church vessels of all kinds, were produced in Spain from the 14th to the 16th century—especially a number of sumptuous tabernacles (custodia) for the host, magnificent examples of which still exist in the cathedrals of Toledo and Seville. The bronze and wrought-iron screens—rejas, mostly of the 15th and 16th centuries—to be found in almost every important church in Spain are very fine examples of metal-work. They generally have moulded rails or balusters, and rich friezes of pierced and repoussé work, the whole being often thickly plated with silver. The common use of metal for pulpits is a peculiarity
