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Surrounded by controversy both during his life and since, Bernard Palissy has been the subject of numerous writings, including his own. During the past 200 years historians have questioned his legendary accomplishments in a variety of scientific fields, but there is little doubt that his discoveries in lead-based ceramics alone would have propelled him to the height of this profession and assured his prominence in decorative arts history. Interest in Palissy peaked during the nineteenth-century Victorian era, then waned until the mid-1980s, when his Parisian workshop was uncovered during excavations of the Louvre. Interest surged again in 1990 upon the 400th anniversary of his death. As recently as 1996, certain ceramic fragments found in Palissy's Parisian workshop sparked theories that he might have even created the mysterious Saint-Porchaire ceramics (see Glossary), of which fewer than 100 pieces are known.

Finally, he was able to make some pieces that he could sell, but it was never easy:

At last I found means to make several vessels of different enamels intermixed in the manner of jasper. That fed me for several years . . . When I had discovered how to make my rustic pieces, I was in greater trouble and vexation than before; for having made a certain number of rustic basins, and having put them to bake, my enamels turned out some beautiful and well melted, others ill melted; others were burnt, because they were composed of different materials, that were fusible in different degrees - the green of the lizards was burnt before the color of the serpents was melted; and the color of the serpents, lobsters, tortoises, and crabs was melted before the white had attained any beauty. All of these defects caused me such labor and heaviness of spirit, that before I could render my enamels fusible at the same degree of heat, I thought I should be at the door of my sepulcher.

Throughout this ordeal Palissy often ran out of money and turned to glass and portrait painting as well as land surveying to support his family. The potter's finances were so precarious he even burned his floorboards and furniture to fuel the oven. He and his family were spurned by neighbors, who thought him to be crazy.

By about 1550, after nearly ten years of frustration, disappointment, and scorn, Palissy at last achieved enough success to support his family modestly. But it would be during the next several years that Palissy developed his "figulines rustiques," or rustic ware style of ceramics (the representation of pond life in naturalistic settings), for which he became renowned. One can imagine the young Palissy wandering the forests and streams of southwestern France making sketches of the animal life that would become the theme for his later works. To render each piece as realistically as possible, Palissy turned to molding his subjects: snakes, lizards, frogs, shells, fish, insects, leaves, and ferns. He worked in high relief, often hollowing the backs of his plates. His glistening enamels and colorful glazes soon attracted wealthy and powerful patrons, including the high constable Anne de Montmorency, the most powerful man in France next to the king.

The Protestant Reformation, meanwhile, had reached Saintes, where Palissy became an ardent reformer and is said to have even conducted secret scripture readings and prayer services on Sunday mornings. The practice of Protestantism in France was banned by various kings throughout the sixteenth century. Practitioners, along with innocent bystanders, were slaughtered, imprisoned, and tortured for heresy, although the magistrates and administrators empowered to oversee the law were not always passionate in carrying out the orders of the throne. To a certain extent this was true in Saintes, although Palissy's closest religious mentor was executed there in 1557 as a heretic. In fact, Palissy, along with several others, was the subject of an arrest warrant the following year, but there is no evidence in Palissy's case that the warrant was executed. Despite decades of scourges and painful retribution, it is estimated that nearly 25 percent of the population in France had turned to Protestantism by the close of the sixteenth century.

In late 1562 the town of Saintes was pillaged by Catholic troops. Many reformers were killed, and others went into hiding. Though Palissy sequestered himself at home, his workshop, which is believed to have been financed largely by Montomorency, was ravaged by a frenzied mob. All of the pottery that had been commissioned was destroyed. Despite the protection of his powerful patrons, Palissy was arrested for destroying sacred church images; he was taken forcibly from his home and spirited off to a Bordeaux prison to await the scaffold.

Only the intercession of Charles IX could save Palissy from hanging. Montmorency, hearing of the great potter's imprisonment, interceded in his behalf with Catherine de Medicis, the queen mother and a great patron of the arts. She arranged for an edict appointing Palissy, Potter and Inventor of Rustic Ware to the King (Ouvrier de Terre et Inventeur des Figulines Rustiques). The Bordeaux parliament (the local high court) freed Palissy, who returned to Saintes to learn of friends who had been slaughtered in the streets or sent to die on the gallows.

A few years later, in 1565, Catherine de Medicis and her young son, King Charles IX, probably visited Palissy in his restored workshop during a nearly two-year tour of France. It was then that Catherine is presumed to have commissioned Palissy to design and construct a large garden grotto for her Palace of the Tuileries, which would be built in Paris near the Louvre, on the grounds of a tile works (tuileries) purchased by François I in 1518. Palissy moved his family to Paris in 1565 and established a workshop there, but was unable to complete the grotto installation because the palace project was abandoned in 1572.

Tuileries grotto fragment, attribution workshop of Bernard Palissy ca.1565-1567

Nevertheless, Palissy' s efforts on the uncompleted Tuileries grotto have yielded fragments that can reasonably be assumed to be his own work. This is all the more important because, sadly, there is no known rustic ware that bears the great potter's mark. Many pieces are attributed to Palissy's hand or workshop, but none can be proven conclusively to be the work of the master himself.

After religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants culminated in the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, Palissy, fearing for his life, left one of his sons, Mathurin, to manage the Parisian workshop and moved the rest of his family to Sedan, where he established a second atelier. There Palissy continued to receive orders for ceramics and devoted much time to exploring and refining his views on natural history. Encouraged by the Peace of La Rochelle in 1573, and in order to benefit from a wide range of opinion, he traveled to Paris and invited other scholars, philosophers, scientists, and physicians to meet in free discussion. In due course, Palissy held the first open lectures on natural history ever delivered in Paris. Around 1576 or 1577 Palissy returned there to live.

In 1584 Henri III became king, the third and last of the sons of Catherine de Medicis to succeed to the throne. By then France was embroiled in another religious civil war. The following year, in an effort to end the protracted religious conflict, the king made the practice of Protestantism punishable by death and imprisoned those who had previously followed that faith. In 1586 Palissy himself was again jailed briefly, and two years later, when he was about seventy-eight years old, he was incarcerated in the Bastille. Some historians believe the king met with Palissy in the prison and, in honor of his forty-five years of service to the royal family, offered to free him if he would revert to Catholicism. Palissy refused. In 1589 Catherine de Medicis died and Henri III was assassinated; in 1590 Bernard Palissy died in the Bastille of malnourishment and vermin-borne disease. Chronology of Bernard Palissy