Powder Flask

This colorful and exuberantly decorated gun powder flask is a masterpiece of Neapolitan piqué. The term refers to the technique of decorating small objects like snuff boxes, mirror frames, and tableware like inkstands and trays, with tortoiseshell veneer inlaid with mother-of-pearl, gold sheet, and gold dots (piqué in French). The technique appears to have been invented in Naples by the end of the sixteenth century and reached its apogee during the reign of the Spanish-born Bourbon monarch, King Charles VII of Naples (r. 1734–59), for whom this unique gold-mounted flask may have been made.

The surface of the flask is covered with a riot of rococo ornament, including C-scrolls and shells in engraved mother-of-pearl, scrolling foliage in slightly raised gold wire, and trellis-like diaper patterns formed of gold dots. At the center bottom of each flat side is a vignette of a young hunter and his dogs beneath a tree, subject matter referring to the hunt, in which a gun powder container of this kind would have been used. It is unlikely, however, that a flask of such obvious artistic merit and fragile materials would have been subjected to the rigors of the hunt in the field or forest. Rather, it is more likely that the flask, perhaps with a matching gun, was created as a work of art, perhaps intended as an ostentatious gift to the king or a member of the Neapolitan court. Although no firearm of matching decoration is known, one might imagine it to have looked somewhat like a flintlock gun dated 1722 in Vienna (Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, no. A 1758), whose stock is similarly veneered in tortoiseshell and inlaid in gold and shell cameos.

Though unsigned, the flask offers intriguing hints as to its place and approximate date of origin. Its flat, truncated triangular form follows eighteenth-century Spanish models, which were usually made of compressed cow horn fitted with a characteristic transverse belt-hook that was attached on one side and curved around to the other. A fine but more modest example of tortoiseshell and steel, engraved on the steel belt-hook with the name of the royal gunmaker, Joseph Cano in Madrid, is in The Met’s collection (acc. no. 19.53.87). The quality and delicacy of the inlaid ornament of the Aitken flask is comparable to the work of the finest Neapolitan masters of the piqué technique active around 1730–60, including the brothers Giuseppe and Gennaro Sarao. The extravagant use of gold, rather than steel, for the belt-hook and nozzle fittings indicates the highest level of patronage, as does the belt hook formed as a stylized fleur-de-lis, undoubtedly a heraldic reference to the ruling Bourbon dynasty. While the early provenance of this superb flask is not yet known, there can be little doubt that it once belonged to a high-ranking member of the court of Charles VII.