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Lot Essay
Cornelis Floris de Vriendt (1514-1575) was a Flemish sculptor, engraver and architect, who was probably trained by his stonemason father before travelling in Italy circa 1538. A year later, he had returned home and became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. As a sculptor, he is best known for his funeral monuments, such as the one for Dorothea, wife of Albert, Duke of Prussia and daughter of the Danish king Frederick I, in Königsberg cathedral. As an architect, he was active as a designer of buildings from the late 1550s but it is perhaps through his engravings that he had the greatest impact. He created a completely original style of grotesque motifs, influenced by Italian contemporary models, which spread throughout northern Europe. Among these one can cite the twenty-two prints of grotesque masks, engraved by Frans Huys and published in Antwerp in 1555 by Hans Liefrinck. Such designs were to have a major influence on the development of sculpture and architecture in the 16th and early 17th centuries. .
The present oil lamp in the shape of a bishop with donkey legs and a spout which terminates in a grotesque masque is a fine example of the imaginative domestic bronze artifacts made during the 16th century in Italy as well as northern Europe. The lamps were said to produce a more even flame and a less unpleasant smell than candles and would have been expensive to produce. Such objects were appreciated by a close-knit cultural elite, for whom the classical world was as important as the Christian tradition. This oil lamp is an extremely rare and courageous example of political and artistic expression of Dutch anti-Papist sentiments. It was made at the height of anti-Habsburg feelings just at the outbreak of the Eighty Years War – as the Protestant Netherlands was fighting for its freedom from the Catholic Spaniards under Philip II. The crushing brutalities of the Spanish attempts to control the Dutch rebellion are well-known. Mocking a bishop, turning him into a humorous, but also a monstrous beast, would have been reason enough for the Spanish Inquisition to descend.
A similar bronze oil lamp conserved in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, is attributed by Krahn to the French school circa 1600 (Berlin,loc, cit.). Like the bronze offered here, it illustrates not only the artistic expression of its author but also the political climate at the time.
The present oil lamp in the shape of a bishop with donkey legs and a spout which terminates in a grotesque masque is a fine example of the imaginative domestic bronze artifacts made during the 16th century in Italy as well as northern Europe. The lamps were said to produce a more even flame and a less unpleasant smell than candles and would have been expensive to produce. Such objects were appreciated by a close-knit cultural elite, for whom the classical world was as important as the Christian tradition. This oil lamp is an extremely rare and courageous example of political and artistic expression of Dutch anti-Papist sentiments. It was made at the height of anti-Habsburg feelings just at the outbreak of the Eighty Years War – as the Protestant Netherlands was fighting for its freedom from the Catholic Spaniards under Philip II. The crushing brutalities of the Spanish attempts to control the Dutch rebellion are well-known. Mocking a bishop, turning him into a humorous, but also a monstrous beast, would have been reason enough for the Spanish Inquisition to descend.
A similar bronze oil lamp conserved in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, is attributed by Krahn to the French school circa 1600 (Berlin,loc, cit.). Like the bronze offered here, it illustrates not only the artistic expression of its author but also the political climate at the time.