16TH CENTURY, AFTER RAPHAEL

Details

A CIRCULAR LIMOGES ENAMEL CHARGER
16TH CENTURY, AFTER RAPHAEL
Parcel-gilt grisaille and polychrome enamel; depicting Parnassus; the reverse depicting two seated mythological figures with a lion and an eagle and with two paper labels inscribed 'P. 48 /E. de R. / 166' and 'E 20'
17 ¼ in. (44 cm.) diam.

Provenance

Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905), in the Entresol, hôtel Saint-Florentin, Paris.
Baron Édouard de Rothschild (1868-1949).
Confiscated from the above by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg following the Nazi occupation of France after May 1940 (ERR no. R 3930).
Returned to France and restituted to the Rothschild family.
By descent to the present owners.

Literature

The Rothschild Archive, London, Inventaire après le décès de Monsieur le Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, A. Cottin Notaire, 16 October 1905 (hôtel Saint-Florentin, Entresol, ‘Grand plat rond - le Parnasse - J. Courteys - 10,000 francs’).

Conditions of sale

Lot Essay

The central image of this charger represents Mount Parnassus, the mythological home of the Muses and a sacred place for Apollo and the Corycian nymphs. There they celebrated with poetry, music and learning and it is where Apollo gifted a lyre to Orpheus and taught him to play. Apollo, seen at upper center holding a lyre, is here surrounded by famous poets and musicians in an image derived from Raphael’s Parnassus fresco. That fresco was commissioned for a private room in the Vatican showing areas of human knowledge, The Stanza della Segnatura, also known for Raphael’s fresco the School of Athens. This room would not have been available to the general public at that time and the enamel painter of the present work likely based it on Marcantionio Raimondi’s engraving after Raphael, which was in wider circulation (see Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. 17.37.150).

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