Summary

Silver-gilt, The Fall of the Titans, Flemish (Antwerp) School, c. 1620-40. A large embossed oval silver-gilt relief depicting the Fall of the Titans, with in the upper part of the composition an Assembly of the Gods in Olympus, with Jupiter at the centre astride his eagle, hurling a thunderbolt down towards earth and shattering the mountains Pelion and Ossa. Thirteen Titans cower and reel before an onslaught of boulders, some collapsed beneath the shower of rocks, others scrambling to escape, one towards the right with a ladder, two others who had reached the heavens tumbling back down towards earth. The relief is based on a design by the Italian sculptor Guglielmo della Porta (c. 1514/15-1577). It was probably made in Flanders, c. 1620-40, and would originally have formed the well of a large basin. It has however lost its original border, which would have had marks identifying the maker and the date. The relief is now held within a plain fillet, put on in 1830, when the relief was set within a modern border by the London silversmith Robert Garrard, to create a sideboard dish. Although they are not a true pair, the Fall of the Titans is similar to and shares a provenance with another large silver-gilt relief at Anglesey Abbey, depicting Diana and Callisto (NT 516394).

Full description

Even larger than the related relief of Diana and Callisto at Anglesey Abbey (NT 516394), this spectacular piece of sculptural silver is a masterly technical and artistic achievement. The story it depicts is of the Fall of the Titans, a scene illustrating the myth of the creation of the world, as told by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses, Book I; Fasti, Book V), who in turn derived his account from earlier literature, including Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Book V). According to this story, the origins of the world began with Chaos and culminated in the creation of Man. Ovid described a series of Ages of Man – gold, silver, bronze and, finally, iron, when men became evil and ‘war marched forth… and shook its clashing arms with hands of blood. Men lived by spoil and plunder; Friend was not safe from friend, nor father safe from son-in-law…’ (Metamorphoses, I, 142–6). During this time of strife, a race of giants, the Titans, sought to challenge the gods and to conquer heaven, piling up a great mountain of rocks in their attempt to do so. The relief shows Jupiter hurling his thunderbolt at the Titans, crushing them beneath the rocks of Mounts Pelion and Ossa: ‘Giants, it is said, to win the gods’ domain, Mountain on mountain reared and reached the stars. Then the Almighty Father hurled his bolt and shattered great Olympus and struck down high Pelion piled on Ossa. There they lay, grim broken bodies crushed in huge collapse.’ (I, 152–6). However, Earth the mother of the Titans, ‘drenched in her children’s weltering blood’, refashioned the shattered remains into a new race of men, who would in time prove no less contemptuous of the gods, no less greedy for slaughter. The scene in the relief is based on one of the best-known depictions of the Fall of the Titans in Renaissance art, part of a series of sixteen small reliefs designed by the sculptor Guglielmo Della Porta (c. 1514/15-1577), one of the most interesting sculptors working in Rome in the sixteenth century (for the series, see Werner Gramberg, ‘Guglielmo della Porta, Coppe Fiammingo und Antonio Gentili da Faenza. Bemerkungen zu sechs Bronzereliefs mit Szenen aus Ovids Metamorphosen im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg’, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, 5 (1960), pp. 31-52). Della Porta himself stated that he designed his series of reliefs, all of which depict scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for use as ornamental insertions on elaborate tables. They were worked up as sculptural models for Della Porta by the goldsmith Jacob Cobaert, called Coppe Fiammingo (ca. 1535-1615). Eight are in horizontal oval form and the other eight octagonal in shape (for recent discussion of the series, Jeremy Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture. A Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Vol. 3. Plaquettes, Oxford 2014, no. 269). They were cast as reliefs or plaquettes in precious metal, bronze and lead, becoming extremely popular in the decades around 1600. In fact, in 1585, Della Porta’s estranged illegitimate son Fidias broke into his late father’s house, stealing a number of his father’s drawings and models, including the models for the Ovid series. Although Fidias was tried and found guilty of this theft, many of the models were evidently never recovered since, more than 20 years later in 1609, Della Porta’s youngest son Teodoro revived the case, claiming he had been cheated of his inheritance and complaining that so many artists had used and were still using his father’s models to make casts in wax, clay, plaster or silver. It was at this trial that the by then 74-year old Jacob Cobaert gave evidence, confirming that ‘the original Stories from Ovid made in clay, then in gesso and then in wax’ were in Della Porta’s house at the time of the artist’s death and that he had made the first casts on Della Porta’s instructions. A plaquette cast of the Fall of the Titans is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (inv.no. A.15A-1952). As well as casts in metal, stone and wax, Della Porta’s design was also known through an anonymous engraving, made in Rome in the late sixteenth century. Whereas the cast reliefs have a very narrow gap between the upper scene of Olympus and the chaotic mêlée below, in the print this space was appreciably widened. It is not possible to tell with certainty whether the original source for the Anglesey Abbey relief was a plaquette or a copy of the print, since Della Porta’s design was much adapted for this version. Although the oval shape is retained, the ellipse is less with figures, for example some of the gods, omitted and the Titans packed into a smaller space. The deliberate gap in the plaquettes and the print between the gods on Mount Olympus and the mass of the giants is here eliminated by the moving upwards of some figures of the giants. Overall, the individual Titans are copied quite closely, especially the four monumental main figures, which display the pervasive influence of Michelangelo Buonarroti on the art of Guglielmo della Porta. However, a group of more distant figures, who in the sculptural casts and the print are partly subsumed into the line of the shattered mountains, assume much greater prominence in the Anglesey Abbey relief, providing the bridge between the Titans and the gods. One seems to shoulder a large boulder, another raises the ladder towards Olympus, and two more (the one on the left an invention of the silversmith) tumble down out of the clouds. In the Anglesey Abbey relief, the gods on Olympus have also been much simplified compared with the plaquette and print, in which they are mostly clearly identifiable through their attributes. Here by contrast they are reduced, other than the central figure of Jupiter, to a series of generic naked couples. There is an element of humour in the placing of Jupiter’s left leg, which suggests the king of the gods is giving the Titan below him a hefty kick. The subject is rare in silver. One very different but similarly ambitious treatment of the subject in silver is the large dish in the Schatzkammer of the Residenz, Munich, probably made in Augsburg or Munich and datable to the late 16th century (J.F. Hayward, Virtuoso Goldsmiths and the Triumph of Mannerism 1540-1620, London 1976, p. 386, Pl. 500). The relief was certainly originally conceived as the well of a large basin or dish, which might in turn have been accompanied by an ewer. Usually basins had a circular ring in the centre, onto which the ewer could be placed, but a small number of spectacular surviving examples from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries dispense with such a space, sacrificing functionality for splendour and display. These objects were made for show and would have been displayed on buffets. One of the most important, the earliest surviving large elliptical dish to dispense with the space for the ewer, is the large basin by Christoph Jamnitzer in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, made for the Emperor Rudolf II in 1602, filled with a triumphal procession (inv.no. KK 1128, 53 x 64.5 cm. Günter Irmscher, Amor und Aeternitas. Das Trionfi-Lavabo Christoph Jamnitzers für Kaiser Rudolf II, Vienna 1999; Sabine Haag and Franz Kirchweger, eds., Treasures of the Habsburgs. The Kunstkammer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, London 2013, pp. 204-207). A similar formula was adopted by the Utrecht silversmith Paulus van Vianen, who worked for the Emperor Rudolf at his court in Prague, with his magnificent silver ewer and basin with scenes from the life of Diana, signed and dated 1613 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv.no. BK-16089-A, B, the basin 40 x 50 cm. J. W. Frederiks, Dutch Silver. I. Embossed Plaquettes, Tazze and Dishes from the Renaissance until the end of the Eighteenth Century, The Hague 1952, pp. 157-61, no. 96; A.L. den Blaauwen, Nederlands zilver/Dutch silver 1580-1830, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam etc. 1979-80, no. 20; Reinier Baarsen, Kwab. Ornament as Art in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 2018, pp. 34-39, 256, no. 3, figs. 39-42). The landscape elements, the bulky figures and the odd suggestions of humour all suggest that the relief is the work of a craftsman working in the Northern or Southern Netherlands. Further evidence for a Netherlandish origin is the presence of a ‘crowned V’ Dutch tax mark, in use in the nineteenth century. Some elements of the design seem to recall the work of the van Vianen dynasty of silversmiths, from Utrecht in the Northern Netherlands. Notably, the slightly Alpine landscape with fir trees, quite different to the less prominent landscape in Della Porta’s original design, is strongly reminiscent of some of the landscape drawings of Paulus van Vianen (1570-1614), who early in the sixteenth century travelled to Prague, to enter the service of the Emperor Rudolf II. However, the relief does not seem to be the work of any member of the van Vianen family; it is quite different in style from the work of Paulus van Vianen, as seen in the 1613 Rijksmuseum ewer and basin and in a series of small silver reliefs, or the relief in the centre of a tazza, also in the Rijksmuseum, by the Utrecht silversmith Aelbert Verhaer and Ernst van Vianen (active 1602- died c. 1640. Nederlands zilver/Dutch silver 1580-1830, no. 8). Nevertheless, it possesses an ambition and a vigour in the modelling that puts it on a level with the productions of these brilliant and original artists. An origin in the Northern Netherlands is not altogether impossible. The van Vianen family continued to exercise a strong influence on Dutch silversmiths throughout the first half of the century, so that elements of their style may be seen in the work of later craftsmen, such as the Amsterdam silversmith Juriaen Pool (1618-1669), famous as a chaser and modeller who himself had many pupils.Pool’s technique of executing figures in very high relief, whilst chasing the backgrounds in very low relief, is the sort of technique used by the maker of the Fall of the Titans relief (for Pool and his followers, see Frederiks, Dutch Silver I, pp. 415-20, nos. 292-97). However, it is rather more likely that the relief is the work of a Flemish or Southern Netherlandish silversmith, as suggested by the very high relief and the muscular and contorted figures, recalling those of artists such as Jacob Jordaens and Peter Paul Rubens. Between 1814 and 1830 Flanders was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, so during this period the ‘crowned V’ mark was also used in this province. The best and most spectacular work in precious metal in Flanders was done in the city of Antwerp, whose gold- and silversmiths were renowned for the quality and ambition of their work. Among the rare major pieces of Flemish early seventeenth-century silver to survive are three ewers and basins made by Antwerp silversmiths working in Genoa for the Lomellini family (Hugh MacAndrew, ‘Genoese Silver on Loan to the Ashmolean Museum’, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 114 (September 1972), pp. 611-20), now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Inv. WA 1974.234 and 235. A.M. Claessens-Peré, ed., Zilver voor Sir Anthony/Silver for Sir Anthony, exh. cat., Provinciaal Museum Sterckshof, Zilvercentrum, Antwerp 1999, no. 35). A no less spectacular ewer and basin of 1635-36, by the Antwerp silversmith Theodoor I Rogiers (1602-c. 1654) or his father Rombout (c. 1573-1634/38), (Peter Fuhring, ed., Theodoor I Rogiers. Rubens, Silver Ewer and Basin, Brussels 2001; Anne-Marie Claessens-Peré and Wim Nys, Zilver uit Antwerpen, exh. cat., Zilvermuseum Sterckshof, Antwerp 2006, no. 182), probably once owned by Peter Paul Rubens, is today in the Rubenshuis in Antwerp. The well of that basin, embossed in similarly high relief, has a depiction of the story of Susannah and the Elders. Some idea of what the Fall of the Titans dish might have looked like when it still had its original rim may be gained from a large ornamental dish with a central relief depicting the story of Cupid and Psyche in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, made by the Antwerp silversmith Wierick Somers I in 1629-30 (Inv. O-2725. Silver for Sir Anthony, no. 55). Somers used for that dish drawings by the engraver Peter de Jode the Elder, and it seems almost certain that the silversmith who made the Fall of the Titans would have been working to a preparatory drawing supplied by an artist such as Peter de Jode (1570-1634). If the Fall of the Titans relief was made in Antwerp, it would have contained on the border section the control marks that would have helped to identify the maker and the date of the piece. However, this information is now lost. The rim might well have been in the fluid and highly organic auricular decorative style, pioneered in silver by the van Vianen dynasty and highly popular in both the Northern and Southern Netherlands during the first half of the seventeenth century. The Rogiers ewer and basin in the Rubenshuis both for example make extensive use of auricular ornament. The Fall of the Titans and the Diana and Callisto are both examples of a fascinating practice in the London silver trade in the early decades of the nineteenth century, in which Continental reliefs were remounted in modern borders. When the Fall of the Titans was sold from the collection of the Dukes of Buccleuch in 1953, it was described in the catalogue as forming the centre of a larger dish, made by Robert Garrard and dated 1830. It had probably been imported from the Continent shortly before then, and its original border would have been cut away and melted down in London. The relief was then, after its sale in 1953, separated from the 1830 border, which in turn was probably melted down or converted to some decorative use such as a frame for a mirror (see the Edward Farrell frame discussed below). A number of pieces with Continental silver reliefs set inside English nineteenth century borders in fact survive complete, to demonstrate this short-lived fashion. In almost all cases the borders bear similar inscriptions which describe the insertion, usually emphasising that the inserted relief was of ‘unknown Assay’, i.e. the quality of the silver was unknown, and sometimes adding that the old relief had been set in without the use of any soldering. Thus, for example, a sideboard dish by William Eley II in the Royal Collection (RCIN 51662) consists of a Continental, perhaps Flemish relief of Queen Thomyris with the head of Cyrus, set within a border by Eley marked for 1824-25, and inscribed ‘Sepr 20th 1824 This Rim weighing 112oz, 17dwts, to receive a Medallion weighing 37oz, of unknown Assay to be added without Solder.’ The inscription was needed because Continental silver was often of a standard below sterling silver, so could not otherwise have legally been incorporated into a marked dish. Other examples of the practice, which was presumably intended to make the reliefs look more magnificent and the objects more modern, have appeared in recent years on the art market: a sideboard dish with a centre depicting the Triumph of Scipio Africanus made by a member of the Jaeger family in Augsburg, c. 1660, with an added border attributed to Edward Farrell, c. 1820-30 (Christie’s London, Silver from Wentworth, 15 July 1998, lot 157); a sideboard dish marked by Paul Storr for 1831 incorporating a German relief dated 1759 (Christie’s London, 25 November 2003, lot 271); a casket marked by William Elliott for 1820, incorporating in the cover a seventeenth-century embossed plaque (Christie’s New York, 17 May 2006, lot 98); a silver-gilt rosewater dish, made by Paul Storr for Storr & Mortimer in 1823, with the centre set with a dish by Philipp Müller of Nuremberg, circa 1685 (Sotheby’s London, Arts of Europe, 15 May 2014, lot 370). A frame marked by Edward Farrell for 1830 was also in the 1998 sale of silver from Wentworth (lot 158), converted for use as a mirror, which may have been the fate of the border made in 1830 for the Fall of the Titans. The relief within the William Eley dish in the Royal Collection has a very similar plain fillet to the rims surviving on both the Fall of the Titans and the Diana and Callisto reliefs. These rims must have been used so that the reliefs could be inserted into their new borders ‘without solder’. Jeremy Warren 2019