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Lot Essay
The design of this tankard is attributable to Paul Flindt II (c. 1567-1631), whose published engravings provided silversmiths with numerous patterns for the decoration of silver in the mannerist style. Flindt was himself a goldsmith as well as an engraver and medallist, and his nearly 200 surviving engravings from 1592-1618 provide myriad combinations of scenic panels within strapwork containing grotesques and flowerpots, as on the present example. Flindt evidently based many of the figures of animals found in his landscapes on earlier published bestiaries, such as Cunrat Gesner's Historia Animalium printed in Nuremberg in the 1550s.
A standing cup in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, also made in Augsburg circa 1595, shows similar decoration based on Flindt and with animals from woodcuts by Gesner and Jost Amman (see Hannelore Müller, European Silver, 1986, cat. no. 51., pp. 176-159). A closely-related tankard by Hans Waidelin, Augsburg, 1595, with scenic landscapes featuring a stag, a fox, and a leopard, was sold in these Rooms, 30 October 1991, lot 73.
PHOTO CAPTIONS:
[lion]: Paul Flindt II, Acht Stuck Zum Verzeichen, 1592
[tankard]: Paul Flindt II, Dieses Buch mit 40 Stücken eingetheleit, 1594. The monogram PVN stands for Paul Vlindt Norimbergensis
A standing cup in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, also made in Augsburg circa 1595, shows similar decoration based on Flindt and with animals from woodcuts by Gesner and Jost Amman (see Hannelore Müller, European Silver, 1986, cat. no. 51., pp. 176-159). A closely-related tankard by Hans Waidelin, Augsburg, 1595, with scenic landscapes featuring a stag, a fox, and a leopard, was sold in these Rooms, 30 October 1991, lot 73.
PHOTO CAPTIONS:
[lion]: Paul Flindt II, Acht Stuck Zum Verzeichen, 1592
[tankard]: Paul Flindt II, Dieses Buch mit 40 Stücken eingetheleit, 1594. The monogram PVN stands for Paul Vlindt Norimbergensis