Relative Values: The Cost of Art in the Northern Renaissance

This allegorical figure of Charity nurtures three children. One clambers up her blouse to reach her left breast; one she pins with one arm to her left hip; the eldest stands at her feet, twisting to look up at his brother. Standing calmly amid her wriggling brood, the woman looks down with a trace of a smile. She wears a laurel wreath on her long hair. Lifting her robe, which is trimmed at the hem with a rinceau border, she reveals sandals decorated with seraphim heads. In its iconography, this Charity is related to the type of statue that stood in the loft or gallery atop the screen that separated the altar of a church from the congregation and also supported a crucifix, or rood. The Charity carved in 1550 – 52 by Domenico del Barbiere for the stone rood screen that once stood in the church of Saint-Étienne (now Saint-Pantaléon), Troyes, has three children tucked into the folds of her voluminous robe.[1] Another example, carved by the Flemish sculptor and architect Jacques Du Broeucq between 1535 and 1548 and still in the collegiate church of Sainte-Waudru, Mons, is accompanied by two children, one nestled in her arms, one standing at her feet.[2]

It seems probable that, like the two works just described, the Museum’s statue was once part of an architectural structure inside a church. The sculptural programs of rood screens varied in complexity. At Troyes, Charity and Faith flanked the crucifix (in addition to the Virgin and Saint John Evangelist); at Mons, the group around the crucifix included the theological and the temporal virtues. Called jubés in France, these stone or wood screens figured frequently in European churches early in the sixteenth century, but after the Council of Trent (1545 – 63) they were often torn down as obstacles to the newly desirable proximity between laity and clergy. This Charity’s fine alabaster with traces of gilding and its good condition suggest that the sculpture originally stood indoors and continued to be protected from the weather.

Since this type of architectural statue is predominantly found in northern France and the Low Countries, the sculptor has been sought in that region. Not unreasonably, the French artist Germain Pilon (ca. 1525 – 1590) was first considered its creator.[3] To those scholars who attributed it to Pilon, the Charity seemed to have the courtly grace and mannered line associated with art at the court of Fontainebleau in the middle of the sixteenth century. Comparisons have been made with the sculpture of Du Broeucq (ca. 1505 –​ ​1584), who often worked in alabaster, a material abundant in Flanders. The stately virtues he carved for Sainte-Waudru in Mons have many points of comparison with the Museum’s Charity. Their straightforward poses are enlivened by drapery that clings to the torso in many fine pleats but sweeps around the legs in broader swaths. The Museum’s Charity does not have the broad, sharp eyebrows characteristic of the Mons statues, and her children have lumpier muscles and more awkward poses than the graceful wards of the Sainte-Waudru Charity. But its refined carving and keen formal sense suggest the hand of an accomplished artist familiar with Du Broeucq’s style.

A third sculptor, the German Conrad Meit (1480s – 1550/51), has been mentioned in connection with this Charity.[4] Meit worked in the same region as Du Broeucq, particularly at the church of Brou, near Bourg-en-Bresse, where his Sybil, or Virtue, of 1532 decorates the tomb of Margaret of Austria. Its sweet demeanor is reminiscent of our Charity. The precision and geometric patterns in Meit’s carving of pleats, however, do not seem quite matched in the more relaxed flow of this Charity’s drapery.

Recently, Jens Burk proposed a fourth candidate, Claudius Floris (died after 1548).[5] Dean of the guild of Saint Luke (a professional organization of painters, sculptors, and other artists) in Antwerp, he was responsible for the sculptural images at the top of the sacramental tower in the abbey church of Tongerlo in Flanders. This fifty-foot-high structure executed between 1536 and 1547/48 supported some five hundred statues and statuettes until it was destroyed in 1797. No images of the original monument are known, and only a few of its sculptural decorations, including some of Meit’s work, survive. Fredericus van Houdt, prior of the Norbertine abbey of Tongerlo, in 1779 described three fairly tall alabaster statues of Faith, Love, and Hope standing on a level above Meit’s statues. Furthermore, a 1798 inventory of works in the Carmelite convent at Antwerp noted an alabaster statue of "Love with three children" ("Love" is the literal translation of Caritas, the Latin word for charity), a hint that it may have escaped the demolition the previous year. Although there are no certain extant works by Claudius Floris, Burk’s research establishes circumstantial evidence that he may have been the sculptor responsible for the Museum’s Charity. Further research may yield proof of this hypothesis.

Although the question of attribution remains open, it seems correct to say that this probably mid-sixteenth-century statue once stood on an architectural screen or tower at a church in northern France or southern Flanders. Whoever was the artist responsible, the sculpture, at once graceful and compelling, is perhaps the finest and most imposing alabaster carving of this period in an American museum.

[Ian Wardropper. European Sculpture, 1400–1900, In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, no. 24, pp. 77–79.]

Footnotes:

1. Ian Wardropper. "New Attributions for Domenico del Barbiere’s Jubé at Saint-Étienne, Troyes." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 118 (October 1991), pp. 111–28.

2. Collégiale Sainte-Waudru, Mons (Robert Didier in Jacques Du Broeucq, sculpteur et architecte de la Renaissance: Recueil d’études publié en commemoration du quatrième centenaire du décès de l’artiste. Exh. cat. Collégiale Sainte-Warudru, Mons; 1985. Mons, 1985, p. 59, no. n9s, ill. p. 58).

3. "A Marble Statue by Germain Pilon." Burlington Magazine 2, no. 4 (June 1903), pp. 90–95, p. 95; Hans Vollmer. Jean Goujon und die französische Renaissanceskulptur. Bibliothek der Kunstgeschichte 53. Leipzig, 1923, fig. 19; "Pilon (Pillon), Germain." In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, vol. 27, pp. 44–46. Leipzig, 1933, p. 45; John Goldsmith Phillips. "Reports of the Departments: Western European Arts." In "Ninety-fifth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal year 1964–1965," pp. 76–79. Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 24, no. 2 (October 1965), pp. 76 – 77, 79.

4. Important Sculpture and Works of Art, including Reference Books and Neapolitan Crib Figures. Sale cat. Christie’s, London, April 21, 1982, p. 60, no. 149.

5. Jens Ludwig Burk. "Some Remarks on Conrat Meit and South Netherlandish Sculpture between 1533 and 1566." Paper delivered at the conference "Renaissance Sculpture of the Low Countries from the Century of Jacques Du Broeucq (c. 1505–84)," Held in Mons, March 7–10, 2008.

Small-scale devotional tapestries like this one were popular among the most elite collections of Europe. One buying trip for twelve such textiles cost Queen Isabella of Castile the equivalent to ten years of the salary she paid the ship’s master on Christopher Columbus’s transatlantic voyage in 1492. A tapestry comparable in size and subject to this one belonged to Isabella’s granddaughter, the Habsburg Queen Catherine of Portugal. The sixteenth-century appeal of this tapestry lay in the skill of its weavers—who rendered the folds of Veronica’s mantle in silver thread, tackling the challenging effect of watery reflections—and in its compelling design. The life-size Veronica, head overlapping the border, seems to step out of the textile and into our space.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

This depiction masterfully demonstrates advances in the development of new genres of painting in the 1530s in Antwerp, namely landscape and still-life, and the introduction of figural motifs derived from the works of Leonardo da Vinci. Increasingly characteristic was a division of labor in workshops where one artist—Jan Massys—painted the figures, and another—the Master of the Liège Disciples at Emmaus—added the landscape.

The Old Testament tells the horrific story of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes murdering a Jewish family for their refusal to eat pork, a narrative of religious persecution that would have resonated with many groups in sixteenth-century Northern Europe. In his rendering, celebrated Antwerp artist Vellert relegated the gruesome subject matter to the background while showcasing his mastery of figural narrative and technical dexterity in stained glass. Vellert’s windows were once found in the cities Mechelen, Lübeck, and Antwerp, but most documented examples have been destroyed.

The corner tile is from the decorative outer cladding of a closed wood-burning stove in the Chapter House of the Augustinian Abbey at Waldhausen in southern Austria. The abbey was dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, who appears on the heraldic shield. Behind the shield, Samson strangles the lion. The stove may have been a gift to the abbey from Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490), King of Hungary, who also ruled Austria from 1480.

Transylvania, a Hungarian province, supplied much of Europe’s silver and gold at the time. Alchemists regarded silver as the moon’s metal, imbued with magic powers. It was also the currency of cash, in particular the Thaler: a coin minted throughout sixteenth-century Europe. In an era marked by constant threat of war, precious silver vessels were literally worth their weight in currency—easily melted down in times of need.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

In terms of silver content, one of these beakers (see also 2010.110.4) was considered equal to ten of the Show-Thaler coins, though their overall value is amplified by ornament and craftsmanship. Transylvania, a Hungarian province, supplied much of Europe’s silver and gold at the time. Alchemists regarded silver as the moon’s metal, imbued with magic powers. It was also the currency of cash, in particular the Thaler: a coin minted throughout sixteenth-century Europe. In an era marked by constant threat of war, precious silver vessels were literally worth their weight in currency—easily melted down in times of need.

In terms of silver content, one of these beakers (see also 2010.110.72) was considered equal to ten of the Show-Thaler coins, though their overall value is amplified by ornament and craftsmanship. Transylvania, a Hungarian province, supplied much of Europe’s silver and gold at the time. Alchemists regarded silver as the moon’s metal, imbued with magic powers. It was also the currency of cash, in particular the Thaler: a coin minted throughout sixteenth-century Europe. In an era marked by constant threat of war, precious silver vessels were literally worth their weight in currency—easily melted down in times of need.

The sixteenth century was Augsburg’s golden age. The city was wealthy from its silver and copper mines and hometown to the Fugger family of merchants. With offices throughout Europe, their astonishing success was based, in part, on canny access to mining concerns and agricultural land—concessions given by nobility as securities against massive loans the Fuggers made them. The exceedingly delicate scrollwork on this cup reveals the effect sought by the Hungarian silversmith of the beaker (see 2010.110.4). The broad strapwork design on the tankard (see 11.93.16) typifies the style of successful local artists like the printmaker Bernhard Zan.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The sixteenth century was Augsburg’s golden age. The city was wealthy from its silver and copper mines and hometown to the Fugger family of merchants. With offices throughout Europe, their astonishing success was based, in part, on canny access to mining concerns and agricultural land—concessions given by nobility as securities against massive loans the Fuggers made them. The broad strapwork design on the tankard typifies the style of successful local artists like the printmaker Bernhard Zan.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

Double cups like this one, which detach at the center to be used as separate goblets, were employed to celebrate both political and matrimonial unions. These cups were part of a silver cache discovered in 1869 in the false wall of a Regensburg home, where they had been hidden in the 1630s to protect them from looting during the Thirty Years’ War, one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. Starting in 1618, the intermittent warfare involved all major powers fighting for religious, dynastic, and commercial causes, transforming Central Europe into ruinous battlefields until 1648.

From the Gothic period to the late Baroque, tankards were a very popular type of vessel in northern European beer-drinking countries. The form was never common in areas that consumed mainly wine.[1] The hinged lid preserved the temperature of the beverage and kept out contaminants such as dust, wig powder, and insects.[2] At the time, gold and gilded objects were associated with radiant light and the comforting warmth of the sun, while the cool shimmer of the silver was likened to moonshine on a clear night, an effect intensified here by the beveled bosses of rock crystal and the reflective silver foil underneath them.[3] Rock crystal, moreover, which the ancient Greeks referred to as ice “frozen so solid that it could never thaw out,” was further believed to attract benevolent spirits.[4]

Works of art incorporating semiprecious stones with apotropaic connotations were usually displayed in the Kunstkammer alongside the unworked and partly refined minerals from which such pieces were made, demonstrating the technical abilities required to master the challenging task of preparing them for mounting.[5] Indeed, this juxtaposition of raw material and finished product was essential to Emperor Rudolf II’s conception of his Kunstkammer.[6] By commissioning exquisitely fashioned objects created from local precious materials, Rudolf sought to honor what were considered to be glorious gifts to humankind from God. These gifts included local stones such as Bohemian agate and sparkling, deep-reddish garnet, which became a “national” gemstone because of its mesmerizing color. At the same time, the emperor was demonstrating the prosperity of his realm, and that appropriate order was achieved through artifice. Rudolf also caused the natural resources in his own country to appreciate in value by commissioning organized mining explorations in all dominions of the Bohemian crown.[7]

On the tankard shown here, complementing the symbolism inherent in the materials, the finial in the form of a crane holding a stone in the claw of its raised foot has a special association with rulership.[8] Since the Middle Ages the vigilant crane has been viewed as a symbol of alertness, a virtue essential to the wise prince on whom the welfare of a state depended.[9]

Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Koeppe, Making Marvels: Science & Splendor at the Courts of Europe: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019)
1. Gruber 1982, pp. 77–81.
2. Koeppe 2016.
3. A related rock-crystal-mounted tankard was presented by King Charles XIII of Sweden to the Swedish Order of Freemasons (Bergroth 2002, p. 69), and a second comparison is documented in the Udo and Mania Bey Collection in Hamburg (Meinz 1966, n.p., no. 20). Virginie Spenlé and Georg Laue in Laue 2017, p. 237, list further examples.
4. Morgan 2008, p. 151.
5. See Pointon 2009, p. 6.
6. Bukovinská 1986, pp. 61–62.
7. Ibid.,
p. 60.
8. Albrecht Dürer included a crane in his design for a helmet for Emperor Maximilian I, on whose Triumphal Arch the bird was also depicted; see S. Cohen 2008, pp. 68–69.
9. Ibid., pp. 68–70.

Clay enabled a spontaneity of modeling impossible for goldsmiths; stoneware objects could be made quickly and at a fraction of the cost of metal ones. The potter turned this vessel on a wheel to manipulate its basic form, pressing on the separately made head, arms, and other details; the glaze was applied so hastily its trickles are discernable.

Traditionally, a departure would be marked by a farewell or Godspeed toast drunk in honor of Saint Gertrude, patron of travelers. "Bottoms-up" (or stirrup) cups are associated with this ceremony. With no base to be set down upon, they are intended to be used on horseback and the liquid downed in a gulp.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The elongated proportions of this statuette and the whorls of the Christ Child’s coiffure reveal a debt to the Mannerist style brought to Germany from Italy by the Munich court sculptors Hubert Gerhard and Hans Reichl. Although they both worked primarily in bronze, they influenced Angermair, a court sculptor to Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria, who specialized in small-scale ivory carvings for wealthy princes and merchants. Natural philosophy connected material to the divine, so ivory statuettes of religious figures were an appropriate addition to collectors’ Kunstkammern.

Principally sourced from the interiors of exotic shells, Indian mother-of-pearl was admired and sought after by Europeans, and imports sold at astronomical prices. Though some vessels worked by Gujarati craftsmen (from Western India) were kept in their original forms, others—such as this one—were carefully dismantled and their mother-of-pearl inlays set in new precious-metal mounts. The extremely delicate gilded silver foot and cover decorated with miniature heraldic roses locate this piece to Elizabethan London.

The coveted qualities of both natural wonder (naturalia) and fine craftsmanship (artificialia) are embodied in this hollow vessel. In the 1500s, rock crystal was priced at its weight in gold. The material’s extreme hardness allows it to be worked—cut, carved, or drilled—without shattering, while at its finest, as here, it is luminous and transparent. Through artistry, a pricey mass of heavy pure quartz has here been transformed into a seemingly weightless bird, complete with beady eyes of ruby and a collar and legs of gilded silver.

The form of the pointed shoe, or Schnabelschuh, that appears in this embroidered shield (1983.364) Aand leather cup (17.190.608a, b) indicates that both works are associated with the shoemakers’ guild. Its elongated tip mocks a style popular with the nobility of the fifteenth century. The leather cup, called a blackjack, may have been used for toasts of allegiance to the guild, and embroidered shields like this one would have been draped over coffins during funeral processions honoring guild members.

These sculptural reliefs (2015.388.1–.4) display extraordinary, jewel-like enameling accomplished through an innovative technique involving molten glass paste built up over an armature of gold wires on a silver base. In expressive detail, they represent four scenes of Christ’s Passion at a tiny scale—fully appreciable only to those privileged enough to view the reliefs at close range. (The compositions owe more than a little to the Small Passion print series by the famous Northern Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.) Expensive as they were, the plaques would have been worth only a fraction of the treasure in the container they decorated: most likely some lost relic, imbued with spiritual power and believed to bridge our world with the divine.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

These sculptural reliefs (2015.388.1–.4) display extraordinary, jewel-like enameling accomplished through an innovative technique involving molten glass paste built up over an armature of gold wires on a silver base. In expressive detail, they represent four scenes of Christ’s Passion at a tiny scale—fully appreciable only to those privileged enough to view the reliefs at close range. (The compositions owe more than a little to the Small Passion print series by the famous Northern Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.) Expensive as they were, the plaques would have been worth only a fraction of the treasure in the container they decorated: most likely some lost relic, imbued with spiritual power and believed to bridge our world with the divine.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

These sculptural reliefs (2015.388.1–.4) display extraordinary, jewel-like enameling accomplished through an innovative technique involving molten glass paste built up over an armature of gold wires on a silver base. In expressive detail, they represent four scenes of Christ’s Passion at a tiny scale—fully appreciable only to those privileged enough to view the reliefs at close range. (The compositions owe more than a little to the Small Passion print series by the famous Northern Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.) Expensive as they were, the plaques would have been worth only a fraction of the treasure in the container they decorated: most likely some lost relic, imbued with spiritual power and believed to bridge our world with the divine.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

These sculptural reliefs (2015.388.1–.4) display extraordinary, jewel-like enameling accomplished through an innovative technique involving molten glass paste built up over an armature of gold wires on a silver base. In expressive detail, they represent four scenes of Christ’s Passion at a tiny scale—fully appreciable only to those privileged enough to view the reliefs at close range. (The compositions owe more than a little to the Small Passion print series by the famous Northern Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.) Expensive as they were, the plaques would have been worth only a fraction of the treasure in the container they decorated: most likely some lost relic, imbued with spiritual power and believed to bridge our world with the divine.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The size of this jewel and related ones (see also 17.190.892; 17.190.893; 32.100.298; and 32.100.306) is such that only the closest viewer could appreciate their full beauty and dexterous execution; they represent the finest craftsmanship for the wealthiest patrons. Each combines gold with natural treasures, such as pearls and gemstones. Bulbous baroque pearls cleverly suggest the fluffy down of a swan’s underbelly or a cloudy mass supporting the Crucifixion. Tiny figures are enameled in the round. Melding the secular and the sacred, these jewels were made to be worn: pinned to garments or hanging close to their owners’ skin. The animals might be heraldic devices; the swan, for example, could symbolize the Society of the Virgin Mary, called the Order of the Swan, which was founded in mid-fifteenth-century Brandenburg in Germany.


[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The size of this jewel and related ones (see also 17.190.893; 32.100.298; 32.100.306; and 41.100.26) is such that only the closest viewer could appreciate their full beauty and dexterous execution; they represent the finest craftsmanship for the wealthiest patrons. Each combines gold with natural treasures, such as pearls and gemstones. Bulbous baroque pearls cleverly suggest the fluffy down of a swan’s underbelly or a cloudy mass supporting the Crucifixion. Tiny figures are enameled in the round. Melding the secular and the sacred, these jewels were made to be worn: pinned to garments or hanging close to their owners’ skin. The animals might be heraldic devices; the swan, for example, could symbolize the Society of the Virgin Mary, called the Order of the Swan, which was founded in mid-fifteenth-century Brandenburg in Germany.


[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The size of this jewel and related ones (see also 17.190.892; 32.100.298; 32.100.306; and 41.100.26) is such that only the closest viewer could appreciate their full beauty and dexterous execution; they represent the finest craftsmanship for the wealthiest patrons. Each combines gold with natural treasures, such as pearls and gemstones. Bulbous baroque pearls cleverly suggest the fluffy down of a swan’s underbelly or a cloudy mass supporting the Crucifixion. Tiny figures are enameled in the round. Melding the secular and the sacred, these jewels were made to be worn: pinned to garments or hanging close to their owners’ skin. The animals might be heraldic devices; the swan, for example, could symbolize the Society of the Virgin Mary, called the Order of the Swan, which was founded in mid-fifteenth-century Brandenburg in Germany.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The size of this jewel and related ones (see also 17.190.892; 17.190.893; 32.100.306; and 41.100.26) is such that only the closest viewer could appreciate their full beauty and dexterous execution; they represent the finest craftsmanship for the wealthiest patrons. Each combines gold with natural treasures, such as pearls and gemstones. Bulbous baroque pearls cleverly suggest the fluffy down of a swan’s underbelly or a cloudy mass supporting the Crucifixion. Tiny figures are enameled in the round. Melding the secular and the sacred, these jewels were made to be worn: pinned to garments or hanging close to their owners’ skin. The animals might be heraldic devices; the swan, for example, could symbolize the Society of the Virgin Mary, called the Order of the Swan, which was founded in mid-fifteenth-century Brandenburg in Germany.


[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The size of this jewel and related ones (see also 17.190.892; 17.190.893; 32.100.298; and 41.100.26) is such that only the closest viewer could appreciate their full beauty and dexterous execution; they represent the finest craftsmanship for the wealthiest patrons. Each combines gold with natural treasures, such as pearls and gemstones. Bulbous baroque pearls cleverly suggest the fluffy down of a swan’s underbelly or a cloudy mass supporting the Crucifixion. Tiny figures are enameled in the round. Melding the secular and the sacred, these jewels were made to be worn: pinned to garments or hanging close to their owners’ skin. The animals might be heraldic devices; the swan, for example, could symbolize the Society of the Virgin Mary, called the Order of the Swan, which was founded in mid-fifteenth-century Brandenburg in Germany.


[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

This densely ornamented vessel with inset colored gemstones was made for the dean of Speyer Cathedral, Adolph Wolff von Metternich zur Gracht, to use in celebrating Mass. The radiant angels are enameled in the round (en ronde bosse), a French technique developed during the fourteenth century that uses molten-glass colors to paint over a sculpted gold core. The chalice’s damaged bowl was carefully replaced with a new one in the nineteenth century.

A splendid showcase of multiple materials and techniques, this miniature triptych was designed to inspire the private devotions of its owner (perhaps one of the Cardinals Madruzzo, successive Prince-Bishops of Trent). With precious metal tracery applied to expensive ebony, its hinged wooden doors invite handling. They lead not into a tiny Gothic chapel but onto an illusionistic nighttime landscape, busy with worshippers adoring the Christ Child. Atop the shrine is a Visitation scene with figures of Saints Anne and Elizabeth and an announcing angel. The doors open into a miniature triptych painted in gouache by Anton Mozart, with the Nativity at the center, the Presentation on the right wing, and the Circumcision on the left. A tiny panel illustrating the Flight into Egypt forms the predella. On the stem of the shrine a Christ in silver bears his cross to Calvary; beneath, his collapsed figure hangs from his mother's arms in a Pietà. On the four sides of the base, the Evangelists, identified by their attributes, record the events pictured above. Both artists signed this glorious collaboration; Walbaum, as one of wealthy Augsburg’s most renowned goldsmiths, would probably have been the more vaunted of the two. Walbaum and Mozart worked together on at least one other, strikingly similar, miniature triptych.

The arms on the lid (Rahn impaling Escher) are those of Hans Heinrich Rahn (1593–1669), who married Ursula Escher in 1612. He became a Burghermaster of Zurich in 1655. The personification of Faith, Hope, and Charity are variants of the figures in an engraving by Dietrich Meyer. Better known as painter and engraver, Meyer is thought to have learned the verre eglomise technique from the Zurich master Hans Jakob Sprungli.

Badges and souvenirs of this kind were sold across Europe during the Middle Ages, at sites where saints had been martyred, their relics were housed, and miracles had occurred. Outside of Rome, Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where the relics of Saint James the Greater were preserved, was the preeminent pilgrimage destination in Europe. Canterbury Cathedral, where Thomas Becket was martyred, was foremost in England. Badges associated with each holy place offered proof that the wearer had made the pilgrimage. The sale of souvenirs was a major source of income for religious foundations. Lead alloy was also used for secular objects including buttons, badges, rings, as well as toys.

Badges and souvenirs of this kind were sold across Europe during the Middle Ages, at sites where saints had been martyred, their relics were housed, and miracles had occurred. Outside of Rome, Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where the relics of Saint James the Greater were preserved, was the preeminent pilgrimage destination in Europe. Canterbury Cathedral, where Thomas Becket was martyred, was foremost in England. Badges associated with each holy place offered proof that the wearer had made the pilgrimage. The sale of souvenirs was a major source of income for religious foundations. Lead alloy was also used for secular objects including buttons, badges, rings, as well as toys.

During the politically charged period of the Reformation, when one’s faith could determine life or death, the Catholic clockmaker Gerhard Emmoser was summoned by the nearly bankrupt Lutheran elector Otto Henry, who had just inherited the prosperous Electoral Palatinate and could thus engage his passion for art patronage.[2] Their relationship provides a good example of how princely ambitions and rarified artistic abilities were seemingly exempt from and could easily cross these otherwise dangerous religious fault lines. The Lutheran elector invited Emmoser to join the mathematician Philipp Imser in Tübingen. Imser was at that time constructing a planetary clock with complexities and time-measuring devices never before attempted at its scale (see cat. 117).[3] Despite Otto Henry’s personal interest in this particular marvel, he died a few years before its completion. The inventive Emmoser seems to have introduced the revolving cage—which, driven by the movement, propelled the sphere and the sun on this globe—as an original and important advancement in clock- movement technology.[4] He entered the service of Emperor Ferdinand I and moved to Augsburg. Ferdinand’s successor, Maximilian II, appointed Emmoser imperial clockmaker, a prestigious title that this exceptional artisan retained under the next emperor, Rudolf II, and held until his death in 1584.[5]

No commission record regarding the silver globe is known. At the least, a gifted goldsmith and model carver, an engraver, and a learned humanist must have worked alongside the clockmaker to execute the sophisticated decorative program. It is hard to believe that, about half a century before the goldsmith Hans Ludwig Kienle crafted his vigorous horse and rider in Ulm (cat. 13), an unknown goldsmith in Vienna mounted this celestial globe on the sculpted back of this equally vigorous Pegasus. The interplay of gold and white polished silver embellished with engravings is of the utmost sophistication. The body of Pegasus, the clock dial, and the globe were purposefully left ungilded, establishing a contrast with the gilded meridian that encircles them, the horizon, and the semicircular segment connected to Pegasus’s wingtips. The globe is engraved with fifty-two constellations, all identifiable; forty-eight of them can be traced back to the ancient astronomer Ptolemy.[6] The clock’s movement runs with fusee and gut line, and “the mechanism in the globe drives the calendar in the horizontal ring via a telescoping rod [detail]. A small image of the sun moves along the ecliptic,” speeding or slowing its movement in accord with the sun’s uneven motion through the zodiac in the course of a year (detail).[7] These complicated mechanisms were subsequently altered, as identified by Jan Hendrik Leopold, Clare Vincent, and Bruce Chandler during their nearly fifty years of researching the globe.[8] Whether the writings of the Lutheran reformer Philip Melanchthon were the primary inspiration for the clock’s design warrants more investigation, as does the possibility that the commission came from a Catholic court. Nevertheless, Melanchthon’s preface to Arithmetic (1536), drawing on Plato’s Phaedrus of 360 b.c., mentions that “the wings of the human mind are arithmetic and geometry. . . . Carried up to heaven by their help, you will be able to traverse with your eye the entire nature of things. . . . For I know that you are certainly convinced that the science of celestial things has dignity and usefulness.” [9]

Clare Vincent and Jan Hendrik Leopold traced the symbolism of the globe and the stimulus for this unique composition.[10] The stand ring points to a likely imperial commission. Its naturalistic rock formations may be those from which water flowed after being struck by the hoof of the winged Pegasus, which in Greek myth created springs of inspiration wherever it landed. The most famous of these events occurred atop Mount Helicon, the mountain of the Muses. Scenes depicting Minerva and the Muses traditionally show the goddess arriving, surrounded by the Muses, with Pegasus not far away, as water gushes.[11] Thus Minerva, the patroness of all Renaissance patronage, is symbolically present to celebrate the benefactor responsible for the silver globe. Counted among the greatest treasures of the late sixteenth century, this celestial globe with clockwork is “an object that has become practically a symbol of itself.” [12]


Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Koeppe, Making Marvels: Science & Splendor at the Courts of Europe: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019)
1. “Ein globus uhr, tregt das pferdt pegasus auff dem rugken zwischen den fligeln, ist mehrtheils von silber, von Gerhard Emoser.” Bauer and Haupt 1976, p. 111.
2. His most enduring legacy was, of course, the Biblioteca Palatina. For a full discussion of Otto Henry, see Mittler 1986.
3. Vincent and Chandler 2011–12; Vincent and Leopold 2015, pp. 32–35, no. 4.
4. See Jan Hendrik Leopold’s analyses of the movement in Leopold 1986, pp. 107–11 (written with Bruce Chandler and Clare Vincent).
5. Chandler and Vincent 1980, pp. 111–13; Vincent and Chandler 2011–12; Vincent and Leopold 2015, pp. 33–34.
6. Vincent and Leopold 2015, p. 33.
7. Maurice and Mayr 1980, p. 292.
8. Leopold 1986, p. 107; Vincent and Chandler 2011–12; see also Vincent and Leopold 2015, pp. 32–35, no. 4, which notes that, in 1767, the clockmaker Pierre-Laurent Gautrin repaired the globe for Delacronière.
9. Melanchthon 1999, pp. 93–94, quoted in Vincent and Leopold 2015, p. 35. For more on the iconography of Pegasus, see Remmert 2009.
10. Vincent and Leopold 2015, pp. 33–35.
11. Hall 1974, p. 210, “Minerva,” pt. 2, “Minerva and the Muses.”
12. Vincent and Leopold 2015, p. 33.

These two automata (17.190.746 and SL.2.2019.33.1a, b) belong to an ornate group of table ornaments that are among the most sophisticated created during the Renaissance. They both depict Diana, goddess of the moon and the hunt, who was able to communicate with and command wild animals.[2] Her power to control beasts is underlined in both objects, as her chariot—a conflation of throne and coach box—in the example from the Yale University Art Gallery (SL.2.2019.33.1a, b) is drawn by two leopards, while she is perched atop a large stag in the one from The Met (17.190.746). Silver sculptures of Diana were particularly popular among European nobility, because hunting was a feudal privilege and a primary pastime of European rulers.[3] A stag with multiple prongs on its antlers, like the mount of The Met’s Diana, was the perfect symbolic hunting trophy; just as a sovereign had exclusive rights to hunt in the lands over which he reigned, a stag with such impressive antlers would have dominated its territory. The free city of Augsburg was known for the production of silver objects, particularly those used as amusements in the courtly rituals of drinking and dining.[4] As Augsburg was a center of clockmaking, as well, its artisans specialized in automata designed to move across and around a tabletop. Both of these automata were likely used as part of drinking games at princely festivities, albeit in different ways.[5]

The goddess in the Yale collection would have driven her chariot across the table, her animal companions animated and her eyes moving back and forth in time with the ticking of the clock incorporated into her throne. She shot her arrow after the chariot stopped, and the guest in front of which it landed was obliged to finish their drink, much to the other guests’ delight. The Met’s example would have itself contained the drink: the stag’s body is hollow and its head removable, thus serving as a vessel.[6] After the lavishly decorated automaton—which includes a few paste stones added in the late nineteenth century to appeal to contemporary Rothschild taste—showed itself off to the table, the guest in front of which it stopped was obliged to empty the wine from the stag’s body by gripping the back legs firmly and lifting it off the base.[7]


Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Koeppe, Making Marvels: Science & Splendor at the Courts of Europe: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019)
1. Seling 2007, p. 41, no. 0270 (Augsburg town mark), p. 207, no. 1248g (maker’s mark).
2. Hunger 1974, pp. 106–7.
3. See Seelig 1990–91.
4. Vincent 2016, p. 78.
5. About twenty objects of the same type as The Met’s Diana are known today in various collections. See Vincent 2016, p. 78; Keating 2018, p. 98; see also Seelig 1990–91; Angelmaier 2015b.
6. See Maurice and Mayr 1980, p. 274.
7. Many thanks to Clare Vincent, Curator Emerita, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (personal communication, February 2001), for observing the late additions to this piece, which also include Diana’s crescent moon (removed), arrow, and quiver.

In the 1500s, priceless knowledge was validated through splendid casework. Supporting technological endeavor was a way for noble sponsors to earn intellectual kudos, even to magically gain scientific knowledge as if by osmosis. Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, for example, famously filled his curiosity cabinet with clocks. This example shows the stars’ positions, days of the week with planetary rulers, the time in Roman and Arabic numerals, daylight and nighttime hours, and the date; it even includes a disk for setting an alarm. Its Viennese maker, Behaim, may have collaborated with Metzger, of Augsburg, whose clocks were so sought after that he stretched guild rules to meet the demand.

The front has dials (parts of which are now missing) for showing the hours, the position of the sun in the zodiac, and the day of the year, together with various saints’ days. The back has a clockwork-driven astrolabe showing the apparent motions of fourteen stars in the northern
hemisphere. The procession depicted on the base is derived from an engraving by Hans Sebald Beham (1500–1550), and the hunting
scenes on the pierced bell house are based on engravings by Virgil Solis (1514–1562). The finial is a replacement made in Paris by
Alfred André (1839–1919).

Elevating less-exalted materials through expertise, celebrated locksmiths in urban centers such as Augsburg took their place beside goldsmiths and armorers. Possibly a guild showpiece or even a masterpiece produced for guild admission, this padlock boasts a beautifully coordinated mechanism designed to confound an interloper but to work with systematic clarity for those in the know. Disguised, the real keyhole is revealed when one of the shields is turned to the right, releasing two bolts, unlatching a cover inside, and causing a panel to slide upward.

The designer of this ewer has borrowed an elegant Islamic form from fourteenth-century works of glass and metalwork produced in Egypt and Syria. The patterning is Italian, an elegant filigree technique known as latticino, achieved by blowing the vessel with clear and white glass canes. The ewer was, however, likely made in Northern Europe or France in imitation of Italian glass, a pervasive type called façon de Venise, or “in Venetian style.”

In 1468 the first Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III, deliberately dropped a glass vase presented to him by the Venetian government, implying that its humble materials were unworthy of him. Mere decades later, Northern royalty courted Venetian glassmakers as they set up workshops in London, Kassel, and the Tyrol. Threatening Venice’s monopoly and divulging professional secrets, the Italian glassmakers faced exile from their homeland. The rich blue hue of this vase, probably made by Venetians supported by Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, was achieved by adding cobalt to the mix; the finely engraved surface decoration was originally picked out in gold-infused paint.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

The challenging size of this drinking beaker reveals the work of a master glassblower. It displays the medium’s admired qualities of transparency, malleability of shape, and capacity for surface decoration—here, delicate gold and probably oil-resin-painting. The Venetian-style glass shown nearby was sought after by princely collectors for display in their curiosity cabinets; this piece is more typical of the local Germanic glassmaking tradition. The northern European form—with a broad, hollow stem covered with relief dots, called prunts—prevented slippage as it was passed from one greasy-handed diner to another in a communal toast.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

This stoneware was produced on speculation for a middle-market clientele. Though handmade, its decoration was quick work, pressed on with reusable molds based on designs lifted from prints. Siegburg potters developed a reputation for interesting forms and the latest styles rendered in a distinctive gray-white glaze; higher end pieces (like a related Siegburg stoneware ewer, 17.190.2058) boasted silver rather than pewter mounts. They were able to reach a huge market by distributing their work via trading posts controlled by the Hanseatic League, a powerful federation of merchant guilds and their market towns that included Lübeck, Cologne, London, Bruges, and later Antwerp and, to the north, Riga and Tallinn.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

This stoneware was produced on speculation for a middle-market clientele. Though handmade, its decoration was quick work, pressed on with reusable molds based on designs lifted from prints. Siegburg potters developed a reputation for interesting forms and the latest styles rendered in a distinctive gray-white glaze; lower end pieces (like a related Siegburg stoneware jug, 11.93.5) featured pewter rather than silver mounts. They were able to reach a huge market by distributing their work via trading posts controlled by the Hanseatic League, a powerful federation of merchant guilds and their market towns that included Lübeck, Cologne, London, Bruges, and later Antwerp and, to the north, Riga and Tallinn.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

No vessel was too humble to decorate. Continuing a centuries’ old tradition in pottery, a comical face—complete with stuck-out tongue—has been scratched and modeled into this simple jug, which epitomizes cheap production for a local market. It was fired in a wood-burning kiln with more regard for economy of space than pristine conditions; indentations at top and bottom reveal that it was stacked with a mass of vessels. The uneven glaze indicates irregular heating, with the cooler, lighter area caused by the vessel’s proximity to its neighbor. The cracked indentation at its side was also caused during firing, probably by something falling against it. Nevertheless, the jug, still serviceable, was kept and used.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

In addition to commemorating their patrons, some sixteenth-century artists nurtured their own fame, which in turn added prestige to their collectors’ holdings. Daucher, for example, signed many of his works; here, a monogram acknowledges his design. Though celebrated in his lifetime, Daucher enjoys hardly a fraction of the fame of his contemporary Albrecht Dürer. The latter artist’s prints traveled and, made in multiples, endured; Daucher’s more expensive media—mostly bronze and limestone—and limited, if often elite, clientele tended to prevent his work from circulating far beyond the place and time for which it was made.

Early commentators identified some of the well-known historical figures that Hans Daucher carved so precisely on this honestone relief in the year 1522. Riding a horse, whose rich trappings are emblazoned with the arms of the house of Hapsburg, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500 – 1558) leads his retinue across a bridge with laurel-crowned Emperor Maximilian I (1459 – 1519) at his side (symbolically, since Maximilian was recently deceased). Prints and medallions have aided in the identification of other figures. Standing behind the two emperors is Maximilian’s court jester Kunz von der Rosen; Count Palatine Frederick II rides the horse emerging from the gateway of the bridge tower; and Willibald Pirkheimer, the Nuremburg humanist and friend of artist Albrecht Dürer, strides among the equestriennes to the right of the tower.[1] In contrast with the orderly procession on the bridge, horsemen and knights struggle to survive in the raging currents of the river below. The rebellious Reformation leader Franz von Sickingen is one of those who have plunged into the river. On the hills beyond the bridge at left, bowmen emerge from a tent to witness a joust, while on the right riverbank, men and women carouse at a banquet.

Several scholars have offered historical interpretations of the scene. Karl Giehlow suggested, for example, that the Turkish knight emerging from a tent is a reference to the conquest of Belgrade in 1521 by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who continued to threaten the east European kingdoms in the year the relief was carved.[2] Georg Habich saw a theme of imperial triumph over insurgency in the scene, citing the rebellion of German Imperial Knights in Augsburg in 1522, a revolt that would be quelled, however, only in the following year with their deaths.[3] Philipp Maria Halm focused instead on the inscription reading "A Sketch of Virtues and Vices" prominent on the tower at the exact center of the relief.[4] For him, the inscription underscored the allegorical nature of the scene, and the date 1522 included in it simply referred to the year the sculptor completed his task. Halm related the relief to a woodcut by the German printmaker Georg Pencz, dated about 1530, and to a poem by the Meistersinger Hans Sachs, dated exactly 1530, both of which concern the climax of the story of King Arthur and the Adulterers’ Bridge. In this tale the chaste king and his knights successfully cross the bridge, which lacks a parapet, while the maritally unfaithful fall into the river.

In a 1956 article Leopold David Ettlinger reviewed these interpretations and others.[5] Asserting that none of the proposed historical allusions could explain the relief in its entirety and remarking that the story of King Arthur and the Adulterers’ Bridge could have little bearing on the relief’s meaning because Charles V had not yet wed in 1522, he stressed the more general allegorical significance of the scene. Daucher’s compact carving, he said, relies on medieval and Renaissance romances, such as the tale of Amadis of Gaul, in which knightly valor and virtue are tested by crossing a bridge or passing through a narrow gate. The "bridge test," in his view, is a secular retelling of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great (540 – 604) and especially the chapter on the Bridge of Dread, which only the virtuous can cross on their journey to the next world. According to Ettlinger, Daucher conflated these traditions in his allegory of Emperor Charles V and his retinue, most of whom, it is gracefully implied, will pass the test of virtue, though some must inevitably stumble and come to grief. The scene vividly recalls the triumphal processions beloved of Renaissance rulers, in which their glory and their exercise of dominion over towns and vassals are celebrated.

Daucher was masterly in carving fine-grained stone into detailed depictions of rulers, such as Emperor Maximilian on Horseback as Saint George (ca. 1520 – 25, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), and of religious subjects, such as his Mary in the Hall (1520, Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Augsburg), which capitalize on architectural motifs and clothing accessories to captivate the viewer.[6] Into this relief’s small format he packed dozens of figures, many of whom can be identified by tiny facial features and costume details, and animated them with varied expressions and postures. It is likely that he relied on a single graphic source for the basic scheme. The four-arched bridge with its central tower and the contrasting scenes of parading and foundering horsemen are very close to the Pencz print; perhaps both artworks depend on a single earlier design. In the desperate gestures of those lost in the river —  some upended in armor, one with arms raised pleading for help, others swept under the bridge —  ​Daucher’s keen artistic invention is most apparent. This relief was prized by no less a figure than the great patron of art Emperor Rudolf II (r. 1576 –​ 1612), who kept it in his splendid Kunstkammer in Prague.

[Ian Wardropper. European Sculpture, 1400–1900, In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, no. 18, pp. 62–65.]

Footnotes:

1. Thomas Eser. "Augsburger Kalksteinreliefs des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts: Hans Daucher ein Zeitgenosse Dürers." Weltkunst, June 15, 1991, no. 12, pp. 1770–73, p. 1771, reviews these identifications made by earlier commentators.
2. Karl Giehlow. "Dürers Entwürfe für das Triumphrelief Kaiser Maximilians I. im Louvre: Eine Studei zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Triumphzuges." Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 2, no. 1 (1910–11), pp. 14–84, p. 58.
3. Georg Habich. "Beiträge zu Hans Daucher." Monatsberiche über Kunst und Wissenschaft 3 (1903), pp. 53–76, p. 59.
4. Philipp Maria Halm. "Studien zur Augsburger Bildnerei der Frührenaissance. II. Hans Daucher." Jahrbuch der Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 41 (1920), pp. 283–343, pp. 306 – 11.
5. Leopold David Ettlinger. "Virtutum et Viciorum Adumbracio." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 19, nos. 1–2 (January–June 1956), pp. 155–56.
6. Eser 1991, p. 1773 and fig. 9, p. 1770 and fig. 2.

The critical fortunes of this bronze reflect scholarly advances in the field of Mannerist sculpture since the 1920s. While in the Blumenthal collection, it was attributed to the most famous maker of bronze statuettes during the second half of the sixteenth century, Giambologna;[1] however, it formally entered the Museum in 1966 as a work by the latter’s rival Benvenuto Cellini.[2] After exhibitions on Giambologna and publications on Cellini had helped to clarify their oeuvres, Olga Raggio proposed ascribing the piece to Adriaen de Vries, basing her attribution on an inscription at the bottom of an engraving of our Apollo by Jan Muller, which identified De Vries as the design’s inventor.[3] In 1998 – 2000, the first major exhibition ever devoted to De Vries confirmed his authorship of the Museum’s Apollo.[4]

This sculptor, born in The Hague, was international in his formation and practice. While his apprenticeship in Holland is uncertain, documents confirm that he worked from 1581 to 1586 with Giambologna in Florence, where a number of Netherlandish sculptors had already joined the great master from Douai.[5] Subsequently De Vries worked with others or as his own man first in Milan, and then in Turin, Augsburg, and Prague. Both the source and the style of Apollo reflect his Italian experiences. Inevitably the most famous antique representation of the god, the Apollo Belvedere —  which was accessible for study when De Vries visited Rome in 1595 —  resonates in the frontal view of our Apollo as he strides forward on his right foot, the other trailing behind, and twists his head sharply to his left.[6] But the spiraling composition, resolved into clearly defined views from sides and back, moves well beyond its ancient inspiration to the multiple viewpoints favored by the front-runner of Mannerist style, Giambologna. Apollo’s left arm is extended forcefully forward; only a fragment of the bow he holds remains to suggest his activity. Unlike the ancient Apollo, he does not gaze where his weapon points. Interestingly, Jan Muller provided an explanation for this: in his engraving, the god’s glance is directed at a python on cliffs above; he seems to have just sighted his prey and will immediately turn to shoot.

But creating an elegant pose concerned De Vries more than depicting realistic action. The back view of Apollo reflects the care with which the sculptor worked out the contrapposto. There are similarities with his statuette of a faun (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden) in the curvature of the spine and twists of the body, though the Apollo moves less gracefully than the Faun. Both of these bronzes were likely made in the 1590s, either in Augsburg or in Prague. On the evidence of Muller’s print, datable to about 1598, and because we know that the sculptor and the engraver collaborated, probably between 1594 and 1598, it is probably correct to say that the Apollo was executed in Augsburg during those years.[7] A drawing of Apollo in Gdan´sk has been identified as preparatory to the statuette.[8] The drawn figure’s more pronounced sway and stocky body, as well as the positioning of the right arm and pentimenti in the penciled right leg under the penned one, suggest that this is an initial concept rather than a copy after the statuette.

In addition to large fountain groups in Augsburg —  Mercury (1599) and Hercules (1597 – 1602) —  and busts executed in Prague of his principal patrons, including Rudolf II (1603, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), De Vries made several small bronzes of classical subjects during his early period. Few survive —  the Faun and a Nymph (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden) are thought to be after his model rather than directly finished by him —  so the Apollo is a rare example of this artist’s production of statuettes on this scale before 1600.

[Ian Wardropper. European Sculpture, 1400–1900, In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, no. 32, pp. 101–103.]

Footnotes:

1. Rubinstein-Bloch 1926 – 30, vol. 2, pl. lv.
2. Phillips 1966, pp.　94, 95.
3. Giambologna 1978; Pope-Hennessy 1985. Raggio’s attribution is in a memorandum in the curatorial files of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum.
4. See De Vries 1998, pp. 115 – 17, no. 5 (entry by Frits Scholten), pp. 248 – 49, no. 45 (entry by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann).
5. Scholten 1998a, pp. 14 – 15.
6. Scholten in De Vries 1998, p. 115.
7. Filedt Kok 1995, pp. 21 – 22, no. b.81; DaCosta Kaufmann in De Vries 1998, p. 248.
8. See Lars Olof Larrson in Rudolf II and Prague 1997, p. 414, no. i.120; DaCosta Kaufmann in De Vries 1998, pp. 248 – 49, no. 45.

This work depicts the continued suffering of Christ after his death through Mary’s grief. It was likely damaged intentionally by an iconoclast. The sculpture was never melted down, despite Christ’s broken arm and the value of bronze as a raw material, presumably because of Gerhard’s innovative bronze casting methods and workmanship. The beauty of his compositions and quality of his sculpting attracted powerful patrons, including the Fugger family of wealthy Augsburg merchants and Archduke Maximilian III in Innsbruck.

The early sixteenth century marked the height of the “Dürer Renaissance,” during which the artistic master’s initials were so famous that their duplication by other artists was recognized as a crime. Though this relief follows a composition by Dürer and is marked with his monogram, it was made after his death and falsely monogrammed and backdated, perhaps to satisfy the demand of the affluent collectors who competed to acquire his works. Indeed, this relief may be identical to a “female nude cut in stone by AD” in the 1607–11 inventory of Emperor Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer in Prague.

The lid is inlaid on its outside with scenes from the medieval story of Virgil the Sorcerer, intended as a humorous warning against the "wiles of women." Corresponding inlay on the inside shows a Fountain of Youth and Orpheus playing music to the animals, surrounded by an inscription based on a German drinking song. The maker, Hans Wagner, signed himself Pixenshifter, gunstock maker.

One side of this work may be the earliest example in existence of a board for playing goose, a game that was first made popular at the Medici court in Florence. Dice-throwing contestants race to the center while trying to avoid landing on certain symbols. The board’s design follows an Italian Renaissance print, but the workmanship of the inlay is likely that of Gujarati artisans in Western India, who produced various works including shell for the Northern European market.

This piece originally belonged to a much larger set of counters, made to be used in courtly pastimes such as backgammon and the goose game, on a board like that displayed nearby. Exceedingly fine workmanship singles out this game piece as one made for the highest end of the market: the slight difference in color between the uppermost boxwood and the base of walnut would have been more marked when new and may well have identified the player, with the woods inverted on the opponent’s counters. The detailed design of two portrait-like overlapping heads in profile is particularly unusual.

Crossing class boundaries and spanning centuries, drinking games remain enduringly popular. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the refined Diana automaton displayed nearby, this puzzle bottle for the low end of the market provided slapstick entertainment: the puzzle involves deciding which spout to drink from without getting showered from the others. Its decorative coloration was simply and quickly achieved by spattering multiple glazes against the bottle before firing.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

Considerably cheaper and more durable than clocks, sandglasses also required no maintenance. This finely wrought example for the highest end of the market was probably intended for devotional purposes. It would prompt its user not only to reflect on the passing of time and the transience of life but also, more practically, to time half-hour periods of prayer and meditation. Nuremberg became a center of sandglass production, uniting new glass technologies, local metalworkers, and a ready source of particularly fine reddish sand from the nearby village of Weissenbrunn.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

Pewter was the cheaper alternative to silver, which remained unattainable to most people during the sixteenth century. In contrast, by the 1530s, all except the poorest members of society owned at least a couple of pewter household wares. Composed mainly of tin, usually with small amounts of lead or copper (in ratios regulated by local guilds), pewter was soft, malleable, and easily ornamented with engraved decoration, as here. A vessel like this one—which would originally have included a lid—was made from molds, which were apparently regularly lent between pewterers and brass casters in Augsburg and Nuremberg.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

Mortars were essential to everyday sixteenth-century life.[1] Indeed, since time immemorial, examples in various sizes and in materials including wood, stone, and several metal alloys have been used in domestic settings to grind seeds, grains, spices and herbs, medicines, and cosmetics.[2] Of the highest virtuosity, this mortar epitomizes the type of object intended for a patrician or princely Kunstkammer. Its bronze decorations boast powerfully expressive imagery through the revolutionary technique of life casting (see pp. 45–47 in this volume and cat. 70).[3]

At the time of its creation, the mortar would have been under-stood both as a precious display object, demanding the close atten-tion of those handling it, and as a functional item that represented the secretive arts of pharmacy and alchemy (see the essay by Ana Matisse Donefer-Hickie in this volume and cats. 73–78). The intriguing decoration contains some elements seemingly designed to surprise, and others—like the lizard slithering below the mortar’s rim—to inspire a frisson of the macabre. The slightly concave frieze is decorated with ornamentally arranged clary sage leaves (Salvia sclarea). Sprays of wolf’s-foot (Lycopodium clavatum), partially overlapped by cowslip (Primula officinalis) and garden sage (Salvia officinalis), grow upward from the base. These life-cast plants are all medicinal herbs, which alternate with five allegorical reliefs: Hope is shown in prayer; a putto sleeping in a bucolic landscape, one leg resting on a skull, represents Vanity; and personifications of Sin (or Arrogance) and Faith follow, the former a winged figure gazing into a mirror, the latter holding a cross and chalice below a Communion wafer. The fifth relief depicts an elderly couple rushing toward a blindfolded boy, which may represent the sense of touch.

The figures were inspired by a series of plaquettes by Peter Flötner.[4] The symbolism conveys the prestigious status then assigned to local pharmaceutical herbs; here incorporated as life casts, they are elevated to the same level as naturalia from exotic lands. The object’s bold complexity is characteristic of the flowering of the Renaissance north of the Alps, and of the creative artistic environ-ment of Nuremberg, which in the sixteenth century had become a prosperous trading center for luxury objects.[5]

Footnotes
(For figures and other catalog entries mentioned as well as a key to the shortened bibliography references see Koeppe, Making Marvels: Science & Splendor at the Courts of Europe: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019)
1. I thank Virginie Spenlé of the Kunstkammer Georg Laue, Munich, for sharing much information about this mortar with me.
2. Motture 2001; Victoria Avery in V. Avery, Calaresu, and Laven 2015, pp. 41, 264, no. 18, fig. 31.
3. The mortar is discussed extensively in Spenlé 2014; Spenlé 2016. See also Laue 2016, pp. 56–57 (listing all known comparable examples).
4. See Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk in Art and Alchemy 2014, p. 127, no. 52. Compare Jamnitzer’s work here to his black-chalk drawing Urania (MMA 2001.111); see Freyda Spira in Alsteens and Spira 2012, pp. 92–93, no. 42.
5. Maué et al. 2002.

Mortars were used in daily life in domestic settings to grind seeds, grains, spices and herbs as well as numerous ingredients for cooking, and simple medicines and cosmetics. The sculptor Caspar Gras (1585–1674) worked for the Innsbruck Habsburg court from 1613 to 1632. Through his training with Hubert Gerhard, himself student of Giambologna in Florence. Gras became one of the artists who was instrumental in the transmission of Giambologna’s style to the Northern Europe. Dated "1603" this mortar is the sculptor’s earliest work presently known.

With the widespread availability of brass, cheaper and easier to work than bronze, the middle classes could aspire to own artistically inventive household objects. Brass foundries were initially associated with the Netherlandish Meuse region, particularly the town of Dinant, prompting the designation dinanderie for such objects. Following the Sack of Dinant, Nuremberg became the industry’s center, producing works for the open market. Objects like these brought simplified versions of the latest designs to a wide class of consumers. The candlestick, for example, is loosely inspired by engravings by the Italian Renaissance artist Agostino Veneziano, perhaps by way of the Flemish artist Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose tapestries and printed books feature similar turban-wearing column figures.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

With the widespread availability of brass, cheaper and easier to work than bronze, the middle classes could aspire to own artistically inventive household objects. Brass foundries were initially associated with the Netherlandish Meuse region, particularly the town of Dinant, prompting the designation dinanderie for such objects. Following the Sack of Dinant, Nuremberg became the industry’s center, producing works for the open market. Objects like these brought simplified versions of the latest designs to a wide class of consumers.

[Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

This modest object is an example of the utilitarian metalwork produced and used in massive numbers throughout the sixteenth century. An everyday version of the fantastic and virtuoso display mortars such as 2016.492 and 2017.11), the working mortar is made from bell metal: hard-wearing but considerably cheaper than bronze because of its higher tin content. All the same, it was decorated—cast from a mold lightly embellished with a simple, repeating crowned-dolphin motif.

These two monkeys, intended to be fountain spouts, were modeled after close observation of captive macaques brought to Europe from North Africa or Gibraltar for display in a princely menagerie. The bronze monkeys were originally part of a scheme for a larger fountain that has since been lost but may have resembled glorious fountain designs recorded in Innsbruck, Danish Kronborg, and Prague. The sculptor, possibly Gras (whose mortar is on view across the gallery), made a single terracotta piece from which two wax intermediary models were cast. Each was subtly individualized—for example through facial features—and cast in bronze.

These two monkeys, intended to be fountain spouts, were modeled after close observation of captive macaques brought to Europe from North Africa or Gibraltar for display in a princely menagerie. The bronze monkeys were originally part of a scheme for a larger fountain that has since been lost but may have resembled glorious fountain designs recorded in Innsbruck, Danish Kronborg, and Prague. The sculptor, possibly Gras (whose mortar is on view across the gallery), made a single terracotta piece from which two wax intermediary models were cast. Each was subtly individualized—for example through facial features—and cast in bronze.