THE BRONZE PROBABLY AUGSBURG, MID-16TH CENTURY, THE SILVER MOUNTS TO THE ASSOCIATED BOWL POSSIBLY NORTH GERMAN OR FLEMISH, 17TH CENTURY, THE SILVER MOUNTS APPARENTLY UNMARKED

Details

A GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF ATLAS SUPPORTING A SILVER-MOUNTED MOTHER-OF-PEARL BOWL
The bronze probably Augsburg, mid-16th Century, the silver mounts to the associated bowl possibly North German or Flemish, 17th Century, the silver mounts apparently unmarked
The naked figure supporting on his head a circular silver-mounted mother-of-pearl bowl on silver calyx chased with lobes and with ovolo border, the rim mount similarly chased and with applied scroll brackets, on black marble plinth
13½ in. (35 cm.) high overall

Provenance

Sir Julius Wernher, 1st Bt. (1850-1912), Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, in the Library, by whom bequeathed, with a life interest to his widow, Alice, Lady Wernher, subsequently Lady Ludlow (1862-1945), to their son
Sir Harold Wernher, 3rd Bt., G.C.V.O. (1893-1973), Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, in the Entrance Lobby, and by descent.

Literature

1913 Luton Hoo Inventory, p. 20, no. 78, in the Library, as 16th Century.
1949 Luton Hoo Inventory, p. 1, in the Entrance Lobby.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

This gilt-metal figure of Atlas combines a goldsmith-like attention to finishing as well as the proportions one would normally expect of a German boxwood figure. With its exaggerated pose and fleshy physiognomy it conforms to other figures created in Augsburg in the mid-sixteenth century such as the wood figures of Adam and Eve in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, tentatively attributed by Jeffrey Chipps Smith to the circle of Christoph Weiditz (J. Chipps Smith, German Sculpture of the Later Renaissance c. 1520-1580 - Art in an Age of Uncertainty, Princeton, 1994, pp. 286-287, fig. 252).

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