Amber cup, North-east German, Königsberg, ca 1570

21 septembre 2024

Amber cup, North-east German, Königsberg, ca 1570

Amber cup, North-east German, Königsberg, ca 1570. Amber, turned and carved; amber medallion with foil-backed reverse engraving. Height 20.5 cm. © Kuntskammer Georg Laue

Provenance: Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen Collections
Published in: A. Rohde: Bernstein. Ein deutscher Werkstoff, Berlin 1937, p. 72, Plate 7, Fig. 19
Note: Entirely made of amber, this turned amber cup is distinguished by the warm tonality of that rare natural material and harmoniously elegant design. The artist who was responsible for this precious piece drew on the canon of forms that made up the repertoire employed by south German goldsmiths specialising in lobed standing cups of similar form in the mid-sixteenth century. The form and the decoration of the amber cup discussed here suggest it was made ca 1570, and this date is further supported by comparison with a small group of showy amber vessels held by the Green Vault in Dresden, the Kunstkammer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Kassel, the Residenz Schatzkammer in Munich and the Royal Palace collections in Stockholm.
It is not a coincidence that virtually all comparable amber cups are encountered in public collections of princely origin. From the fifteenth century onwards works of art executed in amber were among the most valuable objects a prince might possess. Amber – fossilised tree resin, most of which in Europe is washed up on Baltic beaches, especially in the Königsberg region – was a highly prized and expensive natural material. Works of art in amber were regarded as treasures in the Renaissance, not only because they were made of such valuable material but also because of the superlative craftsmanship that went into making them as prime artificialia, which were a must-have in any princely treasury worthy of the name.
The Königsberg artists working in amber in fact targeted mainly an international princely clientele with their precious vessels. So exquisite were these pieces that they were often used as diplomatic presents exchanged between courts. The inventory of the articles owned by Elisabeth of Habsburg, Queen of France (1554–1592) drawn up in 1588 lists a ‘set of vessels made entirely of amber’ [‘Trinkgeschirr von ganzem Bernstein’] ‘that the Duchess of Prussia gave to the Queen of France as a gift [‘das die Herzogin von Preußen der Königin von Frankreich verehrt hat’]. The amber cup discussed here must also have been a work of art commissioned by and for princes, especially since it, like the objects compared to it, was once owned by princes: in his standard work on amber art objects of this type, Alfred Rohde pictures this very cup and mentions in his description of this exquisite work of art that it was once owned by the princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
 