Snuffbox

This snuffbox is notable for the high quality of its painting and for the ambitiousness of its decorative scheme. The exterior of the cover is painted with a view of Munich copied from a painting by Bernardo Bellotto of 1761, and the sides and bottom of the box are decorated with views of south German castles associated with the Bavarian court. Among the structures depicted are those at Schieissheim, Fürstenried, Dachau, Lichtenberg am Lech, and Nymphenburg, the latter housing the small porcelain manufactory where this snuffbox was made. The castles on the snuffbox are based on water colors by Maximilian de Geer (1690-1768) that in turn were copies of paintings by Franz Joachim Beich (1665–1748), the court painter in Munich. The interior of the box displays a scene of a deer hunt on Lake Starnberg and, unusu ally, a finely detailed lozenge pattern evoca tive of the contemporary textiles that often lined a coffer's interior. The decoration of the box's gold mounts includes the letter S, presumably the initial of the as-yet-unknown original owner of this small yet highly refined luxury object.