THE IVORY SOUTH GERMAN, CIRCA 1680, THE SILVER APPARENTLY UNMARKED, 19TH CENTURY

This large and beautifully executed tankard sleeve is from a group of ivories depicting the drunken Silenus and a bacchic procession that were executed in southern Germany in the last quarter of the 17th century. Though no two sleeves appear to depict precisely the same scene, certain parts of the narrative appear to be common to most of them. Compositionally, the closest versions to this ivory appear to be those in the Thomson Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, and another formerly in the collection of Lord Astor of Hever (Sotheby's, London, 6 May 1983, lot 312). The latter, in addition to at least one other ivory formerly in the collection of Alfred de Rothschild (Sotheby's, London, 8 December 2009, lot 9), have both been attributed to Bernhard Strauss due to their stylistic similarities to two signed works by the artist in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Leewenberg and Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1973, no. 833, p. 477). However, probably the most closely comparable piece is a goblet by an unknown master in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, dated to circa 1675 (Berliner, loc. cit.). This piece displays a virtually identical treatment to the faces of the figures: large and rounded with heavy eyelids, narrow mouths and short wavy hair, and to the bodies of the figures: the men slim, with well-toned musculature, the women larger, and Rubens-esque. Indeed this connection to Rubens cannot be overlooked as his own 1618 Drunken Silenus in the Alte Pinakoteke, Munich, was unquestionably an inspiration for many of the south German ivory carvers depicting this scene.