Lot 2

THE COLLECTION OF HERMAN BAER (LOTS 2-9, 11-12, 20-26 & 83-84) Herman Baer was one of London's most respected antiques dealers of the mid-20th century. Baer was born in 1898 in Bavaria, but moved to Berlin where he worked in the interior design and antiques department of the furniture shop Hess and Rom at 106 Leipziger Strasse. He went on to marry the owner's daughter, Lili, but both were from Jewish families and fearing persecution they fled Germany and arrived in London in 1936. Looking for a new opportunity, Baer used the knowledge that he had acquired while working in Germany to establish an antiques shop at 6 Davies Street on 28 September 1938. He became a familiar face in the lively salerooms of London, where he was able to acquire beautiful and unusual works of art. He had an eye for the distinctive and rare, assembling medieval sculpture and works of art, alongside renaissance maiolica and objects of vertu. His shop became a renowned port-of-call for collectors from across the globe when visiting London and he developed many close relationships with important connoisseurs, including Ken Thompson and members of the Brenninkmeyer family. Baer took great pleasure in refining the taste of his customers, encouraging Thompson, for example, to collect rare ivory and boxwood carvings, baroque enamels and miniature portraits, many of which now form the basis of the Thompson Collection at the Ontario Museum of Art. Baer passed away in 1977 but his shop continued to operate, managed by his second wife, Maria, until 1988. Present day collectors now have an opportunity to acquire pottery and porcelain which encapsulates Baer's depth of knowledge, connoisseurship and his appreciation of the rare and unusual in ceramic art.

A GUBBIO MAIOLICA COPPER-LUSTRE CRESPINA

CIRCA 1530-50, SCRIPT COPPER-LUSTRE L TO REVERSE, WORKSHOP OF MAESTRO GIORGIO ANDREOLI

Details

A GUBBIO MAIOLICA COPPER-LUSTRE CRESPINA
CIRCA 1530-50, SCRIPT COPPER-LUSTRE L TO REVERSE, WORKSHOP OF MAESTRO GIORGIO ANDREOLI
Moulded and painted with a half-length portrait of Saint John the Baptist in a landscape, holding a banner inscribed ECCE.AGN VS.DEI, within a cone pattern border, the reverse with lustred stylised leaves (minor rim chipping, glaze flaking, small area of retouching to arm of Saint)
7 ¾ in. (19.7 cm.) diam.

Provenance

The Property of Mrs. Aki Lehman from the Collection of the late Robert Lehman of New York; sale Christie's, London, 2 July 1979, lot 138.

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Lot Essay

This dish forms part of a group of Gubbio dishes moulded with relief borders with central medallions often depicting Saints and which are sometimes inscribed Agnus Dei. See Julia Poole, Italian maiolica and incised slipware in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Cambridge, 1995, p. 227, no. 300 for a similarly inscribed dish. The author notes that the earliest published example is in the British Museum, decorated with the Sacred Monogram and dated 1530, and that 'From the wide disparity in the quality of the reliefs and decoration of this class, it may be inferred that the moulds were used over a long period from about 1530, possibly until the early 1550s'. None of the recorded examples bear the 'MoGo' mark but several have 'N' marks; these and the 'L' mark on the present lot are presumably the mark of the lusterer. For a dish from the Gillet Collection, painted in a very similar hand with Saint John the Baptist holding a banner within a moulded pinecone border, see Carola Fiocco, et al., Majoliques Italiennes du Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Lyon, Dijon, 2001, p. 148, no. 104. Another painted with Saint Antonio of Padua is illustrated by Giuliana Gardelli, Italika Maiolica Italiana del Rinascimento, Faenza, 1999, p. 329, no. 145.

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