Door knocker
attributed to Angelo Giordani
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1848 - 1855
Materials
Bronze, oak
Measurements
430 x 275 x 95 mm
Place of origin
Venice
Order this imageCollection
Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset
NT 1255187.1
Summary
Bronze, one of a pair of door knockers in the form of bound laurel wreaths surmounted by heads, attributed to Angelo Giordani (fl. 1848-55), c. 1848-55. One of a pair of near identical bronze door knockers, the striker modelled in the form of bound laurel wreaths, each surmounted by foliate sprays and the head of an African man wearing a heraldic cap of maintenance with fleur-de-lys, drop earrings, and a twisted scarf around the collarbone. Modelled and cast for William John Bankes (1786-1855) in Venice by Angelo Giordani, 1855. Mounted on a bevelled oak board.
Full description
The head of a black person – sometimes crowned, sometimes ‘wreathed’ about the head – appears frequently as a motif (or charge) in medieval European heraldry. In the language of heraldry, the person depicted is described (or blazoned) as a ‘maure’, ‘moor’, ‘blackmoor’ or ‘blackamoor’, and the motif as ‘a maure’s head’ or ‘a moor’s head’, and so on. The term ‘maure’ derives from the Greek work ‘mauros’ meaning ‘black’ or ‘very dark’ and, in the medieval and early modern periods, was an ill-defined stereotype applied to Muslims of the Islamic Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Usage developed to conflate Muslims of any ethnicity with black Sub-Saharan Africans. The image of the ‘moor’ or ‘blackamoor’ in European heraldry is itself usually stereotyped. The term is now considered anachronistic, but remains part of heraldry’s descriptive vocabulary. It is used here in its historical and heraldic context. Several National Trust properties were, at one time in their history, owned by families whose coats of arms and/or crests incorporated ‘a moor’s head’ as an heraldic charge, and so it appears on objects which survive in National Trust collections. The arms of the Bankes family of Kingston Lacy, for instance, granted in 1613, were ‘a moor’s head, full-faced, couped at the shoulders proper, on the head a cap of maintenance gules, turned up ermine, adorned with a crescent, issuant therefrom a fleur-de-lis or’. As such the motif is found throughout Kingston Lacy in various forms, from crested silverware to architectural sculpture. Elaborate bronze fittings to adorn the doors of private residences were produced in Italy, chiefly Venice and its neighbouring cities, from the sixteenth century. Influenced by renaissance prototypes – such as the door of the Sacristy of San Marco by Jacopo Sansovino – handles and knockers modelled as whole heads were a staple product of Venice’s numerous bronze foundries. Many were produced in the form of so-called ‘moor’ or ‘blackamoor’ heads, the motif commonly found in Venetian decorative sculpture, furniture and jewellery (see, for example, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, inv.no. 2005.138.1). William John Bankes would have encountered such fittings on an almost daily basis during his exile in Venice (c. 1840-55). He is believed to have commissioned this object, one of a series of doorknobs, handles, and knockers incorporating the motif with his heraldic fleur-de-lis, from the sculptor Angelo Giordani, the signed maker of NT 1255185. Bankes regularly employed Italian craftsmen to produce objects after renaissance models, many of which incorporated his own designs. It is possible that these fittings were also produced in a collaborative way (NT 1255183–1255185 and NT 1255187). An associated late 16th or early 17th century doorknob in the form of an African man’s head was also acquired by Bankes, presumably in Venice (NT 1255186) See Mariamma Kambon, ‘Moors on doors: the minute sculpted heads of the moors of Venice’, Wordpress, published 4 July 2015
Makers and roles
attributed to Angelo Giordani, sculptor
References
Penny 1992: Nicholas Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 1540 to the Present Day, 3 vols., Oxford 1992, vol I, nos. 186-189.