A LARGE VENETO-SARACENIC BRASS SALVER

In her extensive study on Veneto-Saracenic metalwork, Sylvia Auld records a number of salvers (Sylvia Auld, Renaissance Venice, Islam, and Mahmud the Kurd - A Metalworking Enigma, London, 2004, pp.215-245). Amongst those of other forms, Auld describes examples which have a broad rim and gently curving cavetto giving onto a flat base such as ours. She believes this group to have been made in Europe to an 'Islamic' pattern, and for a symbolic function as a form of visible display of wealth. One such example of this form, with an added signature of Mahmud al-Kurdi, is in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (Inv.no.54.527, Auld, op.cit., no.5.4, p.221).

Both this dish and that of the following lot were at one point in the collection of Nicolas Landau (1887-1979), one of the greatest antique dealers of the 20th century, affectionately known as the "Prince des antiquaries".