page_title: Waddesdon Bequest
section_title: Renaissance metalwork
hierarchical_section_title: Waddesdon Bequest / Renaissance metalwork
caption_attribution_description: English: Waddesdon bequest, British Museum
context_page_description: In 1898, Baron Ferdinand Rothschild bequeathed to the British Museum as the Waddesdon Bequest the contents from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor. This consisted of a wide-ranging collection of almost 300 objets d'art et de vertu which included exquisite examples of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica. Earlier than most objects is the outstanding Holy Thorn Reliquary, probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry. The collection is in the tradition of a schatzkammer, or treasure house, such as those formed by the Renaissance princes of Europe; indeed, the majority of the objects are from late Renaissance Europe, although there are several important medieval pieces, and outliers from classical antiquity and medieval Syria.
  Following the sequence of the museum's catalogue numbers, and giving the first number for each category, the bequest consists of: "bronzes", handles and a knocker; arms, armour and ironwork; enamels; glass; Italian maiolica; "cups etc in gold and hard stone"; silver plate; jewellery; cutlery; "caskets, etc"; carvings in wood and stone.
context_section_description: Much of the collection consists of luxury objects from the 16th century.  Large pieces of metalwork in silver or silver-gilt make an immediate impression in the display, and these were designed to dazzle and impress guests when used at table, or displayed in rows on a sideboard with shelves like a modern bookcase or Welsh dresser.  Many are very heavily decorated in virtuoso displays of goldsmiths' technique; rather too heavily for conventional modern taste.  They are certainly ostentatious objects designed to display the wealth of their owner, and in many cases were designed to be appreciated when held in the hand, rather than seen under glass.
  There are a number of standing cups with a cover, many from Augsburg and Nuremberg; these were used to drink a toast from to welcome a guest, and were also a common gift presented in politics and diplomacy, and by cities to distinguished visitors.  Their decoration sometimes reflected the latest taste, often drawing from designs made as prints and circulated around Europe, but there was also often a very conservative continuation of late Gothic styles, which persisted until they came to be part of a Neugotic ("Neo-Gothic") revival in the early 17th century.  The largest object in the bequest with a specifically Jewish connection is a silver-gilt standing cup made in Nuremberg about 1600, but by 1740 belonging to a Jewish burial society in Bratislava, as a Hebrew language inscription records.
  Apart from pieces purely in metal, a number are centred on either hardstone carvings or organic objects such as horns, seashells, ostrich eggshells, and exotic plant seeds.  These "curiosities" are typical of the taste of the Renaissance "age of discovery" and show the schatzkammer and the cabinet of curiosities overlapping.  A different form of novelty is represented by a table-ornament of a silver-gilt foot-high figure of a huntsman with a dog and brandishing a spear.  There is a clockwork mechanism in his base which propels him along the table, and his head lifts off to show a cup, and he would have been used in drinking games. There are separate figures of a boar and stags for him to pursue, though not making a set; these can also function as cups.
  One of the most important objects in the collection is the Ghisi Shield, a parade shield never intended for use in battle, made by Giorgio Ghisi, who was both a goldsmith and an important printmaker.  It is signed and dated 1554. With a sword hilt, dated 1570 and now in at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, this is the only surviving damascened metalwork by Ghisi. The shield is made of iron hammered in relief, then damascened with gold and partly plated with silver. It has an intricate design with a scene of battling horseman in the centre, within a frame, around which are four further frames containing allegorical female figures, the frames themselves incorporating minute and crowded subjects on a much smaller scale from the Iliad and ancient mythology, inlaid in gold.
  Other major pieces are sets of a ewer and basin, basin in this context meaning a large dish or salver, which when used were carried round by pairs of servants for guests to wash their hands without leaving the table.  However the examples in the collection were probably hardly ever used for this, but were intended purely for display on sideboards; typically the basins are rather shallow for actual use.  These were perhaps the grandest type of plate, with large surfaces where Mannerist inventiveness could run riot in the decoration.  They were already expensive because of the weight of the precious metal, to which a huge amount of time by highly skilled silversmiths was added. The Aspremont-Lynden set in the bequest is documented in that family back to 1610, some 65 years after it was made in Antwerp, and weighs a little less than five kilos.
caption: Detail of a basin
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