Snuffbox with Pastoral Scenes

The box is one of a group of four(1) that have been associated with four others(2) bearing significantly different strikes of the same marks. In this second group is a box painted by the enameler Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726 – 1801), thus linking both groups with still a third one(3) in which the boxes are mostly unmarked, but several of which have enameling signed by or attributed to Chodowiecki. One of the latter, and another box in quite a different style,(4) are engraved with the name of the Berlin goldsmith Daniel Baudesson (1716 – 1785); the concurrence of the maker’s mark D B and Baudesson’s signature led to a collective attribution of all sixteen boxes to Baudesson. This attribution cannot be sustained, however. Its plausibility rested chiefly on Baudesson’s position as goldsmith at the Prussian court and his documented role in supplying Frederick II with gold boxes.(5) In this capacity he must have been working in physical proximity to the court in Berlin.(6) But the mark of an animal’s head has been recorded as a griffin’s head, the town mark of Stettin (now Szczecin), some eighty miles distant.(7) That Baudesson, as court goldsmith, would have been based so far away is unlikely. Another point that tells against Baudesson as the sole author of the boxes is the overlooked fact that two are struck with different makers’ marks. One in the Louvre, Paris, was read by Grandjean as Baudesson’s, but the letters are legibly I D;(8) a box sold in 1930 was catalogued as having the maker’s mark I M.(9) The mark of the letters D B beneath an open crown (the form of mark in the second group of boxes) was originally published by Rosenberg as that of an unidentified Stettin goldsmith.(10) More recently it has been assigned (possibly incorrectly) by Scheffler to the Stettin maker David Bremer II (1642 – after 1685).(11) No mark has been recorded for Baudesson. It is not, in fact, necessary to assume Baudesson’s hand in the production of any of these boxes. His signature occurs only twice, on unmarked boxes(12) that could have been made by another goldsmith and simply inscribed by Baudesson as purveyor to the king. Three of the boxes struck with the punches that are on the present piece consitute a natural group not only by virtue of the marks but also by their stylistic consistency. Unlike the others they are tabatières à cage fitted with panels of diverse materials and decorative styles, and the goldsmiths’ work is of variable quality, being at its most accomplished on this box. This group does not appear to have originated in the same workshop as the others, but no explanation can be offered for the marks, either as to their correct identification or as to their relationship to those of different appearance. The fourth box in this group is designed and enameled in a style that associates it with the two boxes in the second group in the Louvre, enameled by Chodowiecki, further complicating the issue. The scenes are adapted from several etchings by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727 – 1815) of paintings by Francesco Zuccarelli (1702 – 1788). Excepting for the cover, which reproduces faithfully but incompletely one of Zuccarelli’s landscapes, the original compositions have been treated with unusual freedom. Bartolozzi produced his etchings while working in Venice in the atelier of Joseph Wagner between 1745 and about 1763. His etching of the landscape that appears on the cover was issued in 1760; the others appeared in 1762.(13) The immediate currency of these etchings in Berlin is confirmed by the appearance of several Bartolozzi-Zuccarelli subjects (including portions of the scene on the cover of this box) on Berlin porcelain of the Gotzkowsky period, 1761 – 63.(14)

Catalogue entry from Claire Le Corbeiller. The Robert Collection. Decorative Arts, Volume XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 165-66.


NOTES:
1. This piece and two others in the Metropolitan Museum: 17.190.1241 and 17.190.1243; Truman 1991, no. 76, the incuse letter N being replaced by Q in a reserve.
2. Louvre, O A 6752 and O A 7657; sale, Christie’s, London, 28 June 1972, lot 33 (as possibly Swedish by a member of the Bergs family, date-letter N for Stockholm 1771); sale, Sotheby’s, Geneva, 15 May 1990, lot 14.
3. Metropolitan Museum, 17.190.1237, 17.190.1239, 17.190.1242, and 1976.155.3; Louvre, O A 7683; sale, Hermann Ball & Paul Graupe, Berlin, 25 September 1930, lot 113; sale, American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, New York, 19 – 24 November 1934, lot 1213.
4. Truman, Charles. The Gilbert Collection of Gold Boxes. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, 1991, no. 77.
5. Seidel, Paul. “Die Prunkdosen Friedrichs des Grossen.” Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch 5 (1901), p. 85.
6. Scheffler, Wolfgang. Berliner Goldschmiede: Daten, Werke, Zeichen, Berlin, 1968, p. 135.
7. Rosenberg, Marc. Der Goldschmiede Merkzeichen. 4 vols. 3rd ed. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1922-28, vol. 3, no. 4579; Scheffler, Wolfgang. Goldschmiede Mittel- und Nordostdeutschlands, von Wernigerode bis Lauenburg in Pommern: Daten, Werke, Zeichen. Berlin, 1980, pp. 413 – 14. The Berlin town mark is a bear.
8. Grandjean, Serge. Catalogue des tabatieres, boîtes et étuis des XVIIIe et XIXe siecles du Musée du Louvre. Paris, 1981, no. 415.
9. Sale, Hermann Ball & Paul Graupe, Berlin, 25 September 1930, lot 113.
10. Rosenberg 1922 – 28, vol. 3, no. 4588.
11. Scheffler, Wolfgang. Goldschmiede Mittel- und Nordostdeutschlands, von Wernigerode bis Lauenburg in Pommern: Daten, Werke, Zeichen. Berlin, 1980, p. 435. The doubt arises from Scheffler’s description of the mark as occurring on a gold box with miniatures, which is unlikely to be a seventeenth-century object.
12. Metropolitan Museum, 17.190.1237 and 17.190.1242.
13. Von Gotzkowsky zur KPM: Baus der Frühzeit des friderizianischen Porzellans. Exhibition, Staatliche Porzellanmanufaktur Berlin (KPM), Schloss Charlottenburg, 17 August – 2 November 1986. Catalogue by Winfried Baer, Ilse Baer, and Suzanne Grosskopf-Knaack, p. 347.
14. Ibid., p. 218.

Marking: Marks:(1)
Inside the cover and base:
1. A maker’s mark, D B beneath a closed crown
2. A crowned, tongued animal’s head, possibly the town mark of Stettin
3. An unidentified mark; N incuse


Note:
1. Certain marks have been interpreted by Charles Truman.

Russian Imperial Collections; sale, Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, 6-7 November 1928, lot 250, pl. 77; [S. Bulgari, Rome]. Acquired by Robert Lehman through Bulgari in 1956.