.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Liselotte Möller, Der Wrangelschrank und die verwandten süddeutschen Intarsienmöbel des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1956;
Dieter Alfter, Die geschichte des Augsburger Kabinettschrankes, Augsburg 1986, pp. 10-28;
Reinier Baarsen, 17th-century cabinets, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 2000, pp. 3-9.
The present lot belongs to an extensive group of South German furniture mainly from Swabia, Bavaria and Tirol inlaid with landscapes, mythological figures and hunting scenes. The intricate and elaborate marquetry with which the cabinet is decorated on all sides, immediately marked it as a fashionable luxury item, reflecting on the taste and the status of its owner. Indeed, cabinets of this kind may be said to be the earliest kind of international luxury furniture made in large quantities anywhere in Europe.
From the middle of the 16th Century, Augsburg had witnessed an extraordinary ascendancy as a centre of furniture production for the international market, a new phenomenon at the time. In particular, the development of marquetry contributed to this prominent position, favoured by the ready availability of a large variety of indigenous woods and the invention of improved kinds of saws and other equipment.
Amongst the multitude of mythological scenes depicted on the cabinet, the most important are:
The judgement of Paris - outside of the large doors
Euridice killed by a serpent - reverse of the left door
Meleager and Atalanta - reverse of the right door
Liselotte Möller, Der Wrangelschrank und die verwandten süddeutschen Intarsienmöbel des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1956;
Dieter Alfter, Die geschichte des Augsburger Kabinettschrankes, Augsburg 1986, pp. 10-28;
Reinier Baarsen, 17th-century cabinets, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 2000, pp. 3-9.
The present lot belongs to an extensive group of South German furniture mainly from Swabia, Bavaria and Tirol inlaid with landscapes, mythological figures and hunting scenes. The intricate and elaborate marquetry with which the cabinet is decorated on all sides, immediately marked it as a fashionable luxury item, reflecting on the taste and the status of its owner. Indeed, cabinets of this kind may be said to be the earliest kind of international luxury furniture made in large quantities anywhere in Europe.
From the middle of the 16th Century, Augsburg had witnessed an extraordinary ascendancy as a centre of furniture production for the international market, a new phenomenon at the time. In particular, the development of marquetry contributed to this prominent position, favoured by the ready availability of a large variety of indigenous woods and the invention of improved kinds of saws and other equipment.
Amongst the multitude of mythological scenes depicted on the cabinet, the most important are:
The judgement of Paris - outside of the large doors
Euridice killed by a serpent - reverse of the left door
Meleager and Atalanta - reverse of the right door