A design for a wall lamp with allegories of Justice, Eloquence and Temperance

This drawing is probably from a large album, dismembered after World War II, of drawings for goldsmiths attributed to Erasmus Hornick. Other albums of drawings by Hornick, which were probably used as pattern books, are at Princeton, in the stereichisches Museum, Vienna, in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. John Hayward pointed out that all these drawings could be associated with Hornick and his workshop. Hornick also executed a few signed and dated prints, some reproduced in J. Hayward, 'The Goldsmith's Designs of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Reattributed to Erasmus Hornick' and 'The Drawings and Engraved Ornament of Erasmus Hornick', The Burlington Magazine, 1968, CX, pp. 201-7 and 383-93. Hornick worked as a goldsmith in Augsburg and in Nuremberg between 1559-66, and died probably at the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague in 1583. He probably came from Antwerp to Augsburg in the early 1550s. The sheet in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (T. DaCosta Kaufmann, Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, 1540-1680, exhib. cat., The Art Museum, Princeton University and elsewhere, 1982, no. 25) and the one sold at Christie's London, 18 April 1989, lot 142, both come from the Liechtenstein album and are close in handling to the present drawing.