Mortar with Medusa masks
Spanish School
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1550 - 1700
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
81 mm (Height); 132 mm (Diameter); 100.5 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Spain
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 514978
Summary
Bronze, mortar with Medusa masks, Spanish School, 1550-1700. A small Spanish mortar, the projecting rim decorated with stars. On the body, between four balusters, are four Medusa masks. No handles. Perhaps made in the seventeenth century, although an earlier or a late date are also possible, since mortars of this type were made over a long period.
Full description
Various forms of stones and dishes have been employed for the grinding or pounding of foodstuffs, minerals and pharmaceutical materials since the Neolithic period or even before. Grinding bowls are first recorded as early as 9,000 B.C and recognisable mortars and pestles, the hand-held tool used to do the actual grinding, were made by the Greeks and the Romans. Although bronze mortars were made in antiquity, they began to made in larger numbers from the medieval period onwards, with shapes evolving over the centuries (for an introduction to mortars, see Peta Motture, Bells and Mortars. Catalogue of Italian Bronzes in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2001, pp. 13-50). This modest mortar is one of a group of three similar examples at Anglesey Abbey, which may have been acquired as a group by Lord Fairhaven at some date between 1932 and 1940 (for the others, see NT 514971 and 514979). They are described in the 1940 inventory as in the Living Room, where they served as ashtrays. The mortar is of a type that developed in Spain in the sixteenth century (for the type, and Spanish Renaissance mortars more generally, see Museo Retrospectivo de Farmacia y Medicina de los Laboratorios del Norte de España, S.A., Masnou 1952, pp. 16-30; Edmund Launert, Der Mörser. Geschichte und Erscheinungsbild eines Apothekengerätes, Munich 1990, pp. 64-65, 178-81, figs. 186- 93). These mortars are squat in form and broader than they are high, with the body almost always divided with some form of vertical ribbing. They have a spreading lip and often a projecting foot, but only very rarely do they have handles. The body is generally decorated with applied elements between the ribs, such as eight-pointed stars, cockle shells (the symbol worn by pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela), coats-of-arms, plant motifs and masks. A mortar of the general type may be seen in the lower right corner of Diego Velázquez’s Kitchen Scene of 1618-20, in the Art Institute of Chicago. None of this class of Spanish mortars is dated or signed, making their dating extremely difficult. They seem to have been produced from the early sixteenth into the eighteenth centuries. The most prominent feature of this particular mortar is the mask of the head of Medusa, applied four times to the body. Medusa was a Gorgon, a monstrous being in Greek mythology, taking the form of a woman whose hair was formed from living serpents, and the aspect of which was so hideous that anyone looking at a gorgon would at once be turned into stone. It was the Gorgon Medusa’s head that was cut off by the mythological hero Perseus and used by him as a weapon. Medusa masks are a common decorative feature in Italian art of the time, so their use in these objects reflects the influence of the Italian Renaissance on the Iberian peninsula. There is otherwise no obvious iconographical reason why the motif should have been used to decorate mortars. Italian mortars decorated with the motif are also known, for example two Central Italian 16th-century examples in the Castelli collection, Siena (Giorgio Lise and Bruno Bearzi, Antichi mortai di farmacia, Milan 1975, Tav. XXV and XXVIII). Perhaps, therefore, an Italian example served as a model for the Spanish founders. Spanish mortars decorated with Medusa masks are recorded in the collection of the Laboratorios de Norte de España (Museo Retrospectivo de Farmacia y Medicina, figs. 24, 36, 37, 40), the second of these (fig. 36) all but identical to the mortar at Anglesey Abbey. There were in fact no fewer than eleven examples of this type in the Laboratorios de Norte collection, which varied mainly in the quality of their modelling and casting. Another example is in the Perelada Palace collection in Girona, Spain (Francisco de P. Bofill, Catalogue of Mortars. Perelada Palace Collection, Perelada 1968, no. 32), which has two other mortars of similar type, but with different masks (nos. 28-29). A modern version of the Anglesey Abbey mortar, stated to have been produced in Italy in the nineteenth or the twentieth century, is in the Robert Lehman collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Inv. 1975.1.1371. Frits Scholten, European Sculpture and Metalwork in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York 2011, no.175). The Anglesey Abbey mortar also bears the star pattern, another common motif in Spanish mortars, on the underside of its rim (see Museo Retrospectivo de Farmacia y Medicina, figs. 16-21; Launert, Der Mörser, p. 178, fig. 186). However the stars here, unusually, are only six-, rather than the more usual eight-pointed. Ribbed mortars of a similar general type, but embellished with a wide variety of plaquette and medal designs, were also popular in France in the seventeenth century, made in workshops in Lyon and other centres (for examples, see Bertrand Bergbauer, La France des Fondeurs. Art et Usage du Bronze aux XVIe et XVIIe Siècles, Paris 2010, nos. 55-56, 81-84). Jeremy Warren 2019
Provenance
Acquired by Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with two other similar mortars between 1932 and 1940; listed in the Anglesey Abbey inventory of 1940, p. 21, Living Room, valued at £15 the three mortars; bequeathed to the National Trust by Lord Fairhaven with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Spanish School, sculptor
References
'Anglesey Abbey, Lode, Cambridgeshire. An Inventory and Valuation of Furniture, Books, Ornamental Items & Household Effects .. prepared for Insurance Purposes’, Turner, Lord and Ransom, April 1940, p. 21. Christie, Manson & Woods 1971: The National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge. Inventory: Furniture, Textiles, Porcelain, Bronzes, Sculpture and Garden Ornaments’, 1971, p. 143.