A South German Renaissance mother-of-pearl, fruitwood and ebony inlaid carved alabaster and engraved ivory casket, probably Nuremberg, second half 16th century, on a George I carved walnut stand attributed to James Moore, circa 1720

the hinged lid and exterior inlaid with geometrical polyhedral motifs and Allegorical and Classical figures in ivory and mother-of-pearl, applied with architectural mouldings in carved alabaster, the ash-veneered interior similarly inlaid and with a drawer in the base, one panel dated 1565; the stand with featherbanded frieze drawer on cabriole legs headed by carved Indian masks on scrolled feet 

Possibly in the family of Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine (1617-1680); his daughter, Raugravine Karoline Elisabeth von der Pfalz (1659-1696); by descent to Lady Frederica Schomberg (1687-1751), and her daughter, Lady Caroline Darcy (d. 1778), wife of William Kerr, 4th Marquis of Lothian (1710-1775), thence by descent

Glasgow, Corporation Galleries, The Glasgow Italian Art Loan Exhibition, 1 January 1882-31 December 1883 

The Italian Art Loan Exhibition, exhib. cat., Glasgow, 1883, cat. 718, described as a "casket, in various woods, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, divided by carved pilasters, &c., into numerous panels, having incised ivory figures representing classical and scriptural subjects, allegories, and Renaissance ornaments, with inscriptions. Dated 1564 [sic]."

Inventories: 

Newbattle Abbey Inventory, 1901, p. 73, in the Inner Hall: "Italian [sic] inlaid casket with architectural panel front, with classical figure subjects in ivory, & figure caryatides [sic] & carved stand with drawer, on 4 shaped legs"; 

Newbattle Abbey Inventory, 1930, p. 8, in the Upper Hall: "A 17th century cabinet of walnut wood, ebony & ivory etched with figure subjects and arabesques, fitted lifting top, the front with drawers & carved ivory caryatides on an early Chippendale mahogany stand with cabriole legs carved masks & fiddle head feet 21" wide 15" deep 3ft 3 high." 

Related Literature

A. Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture, Woodbridge, 2009, pp. 200-15;

P. R. Cromwell, Polyhedra, Cambridge, 1997;

H. Kreisel, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels, vol. I, Munich, 1970;

W. Koeppe, “Cupboard (Fassadenschrank)”, in D. O. Kisluk-Grosheide, W. Koeppe, W. Rieder (eds.), European Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Highlights of the Collection, New York, 2006, pp. 26-28;

W. Seipel, Spielwelten der Kunst: Kunstkammerspiele, Milan, 1998;

H. Hoos, “Ars sine Scientia nihil est”, in Weltkunst, 59, no. 16 (1989), pp. 2232-35.

This rare casket and its English stand are in very good condition considering their age, with minor losses, marks and scratches consistent with age and use, and faint traces of old woodworm which is no longer active. The casket: As expected, the ivory panels display secure cracking commensurate with age. Some damage to the area immediately surrounding the lock of the casket's frieze drawer proper, and some repaired cracks to the carved alabaster caryatids, the male figure having lost its original head which has been substituted with a later plaster. The opposite long side with one carved alabaster roundel missing. One of the two short side drawers with lock present but detached. One piece of scrolled moulding circa 4cm. long is also detached but present. One of the two short sides (with figures of Fortitudo and Prudentia) with one small moulding missing. The geometric marquetry is in overall excellent condition, as is the interior of the casket. The stand: Overall in reasonable restored condition. The drawer lacking its escutcheon and the lining with two tape repairs to consolidate shrinkage cracks. The veneers to the frieze with evidence of restoration including minor areas of filler. The front and rear right legs with repairs to old breaks to the finely carved 'India' masks which are now secured with screws. The reverse of each 'India' mask with a gauze mesh support which have some age. Three feet with repaired breaks to the toes. Surface with typical minor old marks and scratches consistent with age and use.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

A unique masterpiece

This exceptionally rare casket, unpublished until now, is a museum piece deserving a special place in the history of European furniture. As one of the most accomplished pieces created by South German craftsmen in the second half of the 16th century, it was conceived during the glorious years of the German Renaissance in its perhaps most active centre, the city of Nuremberg. It stands as a summa of the knowledge and beliefs of that century, bearing witness to the complex relationship between Renaissance rationale and that of Antiquity.

The casket’s most striking feature lies in the rich inlay of stereometric forms. A small group of precious items also incorporating this type of panels, clearly the work of a specialized workshop, exists, but the offered lot is the only known one to combine these geometric forms with exquisitely engraved ivory panels and carved alabaster and boxwood caryatids in a coherent architectural design. Inlays of ivory, mother-of-pearl, fruitwoods, and walnut are employed on elements such as the central pediments and the pilasters with an illusionistic purpose, cleverly mirroring the rusticated podium.

The variety of the costly materials employed and the multi-layered symbolism are all suggestive of the casket having been intended for the Kunstkammer of a great contemporary German prince. Suggestively, two relatable pieces, a games board in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (fig. 1), and a miniature cabinet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, were both at one point in the Hapsburg Imperial collections. 

The iconography

The finely engraved ivory panels deploy printed sources by the influential, Nuremberg-based Virgil Solis (1514-1562) and Heinrich Aldegrever (1502-1561). The central panels on the four sides depict well-known episodes or exempla from the Scriptures and Classical Antiquity, and are flanked by representations of the Four Temperaments (on the front and back) and Virtues (on both sides) that stress their moral significance.

The central panel on the front of the cabinet depicts the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba¹ drinking poison after an engraving by Heinrich Aldegrever dated 1553, with the Latin inscription “Masinissa Scipionis cosilio Sopho / nisben numidie regina relinquens, / ne in manus Ro. incideret benen / ii ei misit quo hausto expiravit” (fig. 2). This is flanked by two smaller panels, one depicting the Melancholic Temperament (Melancolicus, analytical and wise) as a full-length standing female figure holding a pair of dividers in her left hand, with a stag on the lower left, a swan on the upper right, and a broken column on the foreground, the other the Phlegmatic Temperament (Flegmaticus, peaceful and relaxed), depicting a standing female figure holding a spit in her right hand and a rattle in her left hand, with an owl perched on her right shoulder and an ass on the lower left. Both derive from engravings of the Four Temperaments by Virgil Solis, circulated from the mid-16th century. On the opposite side, the central panel depicts Herkinbald killing his nephew, guilty of rape, and is accompanied by the Latin inscription: “Pater, nepus suam mortem, filius / de generas, male periret, eum / obruncauit”. This is also after an engraving by Aldegrever Heinrich dated 1553.² Flanking the scene are personifications, on the left, of the Choleric Temperament (Colericus, or short-tempered) as a full-length female figure holding a torch in her right hand and a heart pierced by a harrow in her left hand, with a lion behind her and an eagle by her side – and, on the right, of the Sanguine Temperament (Sanguineus, or optimistic) symbolized by a standing female figure holding a lyre and a musical score, at the lower right a peacock, at the upper left a horse.

Postulated by Hippocrates and rooted in the ancient theory of the four humors, temperaments were thought to be representative of the four fundamental personality types, the four bodily fluids or humors supposedly affecting personality traits and behaviours.

The left side is centred by an engraved ivory panel depicting Delilah cutting Samson’s hair, and again based on a print by Aldegrever, dated 1528. The panel is flanked on the left by the Fortitudo (courage), one of the four cardinal virtues of Greek philosophy and Christian tradition, seen standing holding a pillar’s capital, and on the right by that of Prudentia (prudence) holding a mirror. Lastly, the right side is centred by a panel depicting Phyllis riding Aristotle, an exemplum of Romance origin. It is flanked on the right by the Christian virtue of Faith (Fides), holding as attributes a chalice in her left hand and a cross in her right, and on the left by the virtue of Hope (Spes).

The geometric intarsia

The humanist fascination with polyhedra as a representation of the universe found fertile soil in artists such as Piero della Francesca, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Albrecht Dürer, who fashioned the principle "Ars sine Scientia nihil est". In Cromwell’s words (1997, p. 136), “The rediscovery of Plato in the fifteenth century introduced the Pythagorean creed ‘Number is the basis of all things’ and the idea that nature could be understood through mathematics.” Platonic and Archimedean solids with variations greatly influenced the theory and practice of art thanks to the new far-reaching printed media. Key publications included Augustin Hirschvogel’s Geometria (Nurember, 1543); Hans Lencker’s Perspectiva Literaria (Nuremberg, 1567); Lorenz Stoer’s Geometria et Perspectiva (Augsburg, 1567); and especially Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Perspectiva Corporum Regularium (Nuremberg, 1568), texts through which the Germans were now fashioning their own perspective, much as the Florentines had done in the previous century. In Nuremberg, local artists such as cabinet-makers and goldsmiths were in close contact with sculptors and printmakers, who often supplied them with patterns and models; it would therefore be natural for workshops to be aware for instance of Jamnitzer’s studies before the actual publication of the finished text. 

Renaissance princes and humanists would certainly have been delighted by the ingenious, complex symbolism of the casket. Wenzel Jamnitzer (1507-1585), the goldsmith and printmaker in etching active in Nuremberg and at the service of Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolf II, had divided his greatly influential work in five parts, paying homage to the ancient belief that the five platonic bodies should be relatable to the four elements of nature and that the universe has a dodecahedron form (cf. Hoos, 1989, p. 2234). The tetrahedron thus corresponded to Fire; the hexahedron to Earth; the icosahedron to Water; the octahedron to Air.³ Moreover, the learned man of the time would have been aware of the additional 'correspondance' established in ancient times between these elements and the four temperaments.

Some of the Lothian casket’s geometric forms were known from Greek times, others were devised during the early Renaissance and some appear to be contemporary inventions. This is the subject of a seminal study by Hildegard Hoos, who, in 1989, scrutinized the complex representations of a similarly inlaid writing slope or Pultkästchen in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt (fig. 3), and presumably a product of the same workshop.⁴ The polyhedral arrangement on these pieces, Hoos suggests, would stand for the divine creation itself, its regularities defying constant change. Indeed, from the standpoint of natural philosophy the mathematical correlations within the world are seen as instances of the divine order, acting as a constant reminder of causal connections, a concern central to this epoch.

With its intricate, cross-referenced decorative scheme the casket therefore stands as an object of wonder encapsulating, as it were, the Weltanschauung of the Renaissance man, along the lines of the cabinets of wonders, composed both of naturalia and artificialia, which sought to recreate the variety of the world in a condensed microcosm.

The architectural design

Italian Renaissance palace architecture greatly influenced the designs of Central European cabinet-makers throughout the 16th and early 17th century. Furniture from the period is perhaps best exemplified by a series of Prunkportalen, including the two now in the Spanish Royal Palace of El Escorial. The importance in this context of Vitruvius’s De architectura (after 17 B.C.) translated into German in 1548 by Hermann Ryff of Nuremberg, can hardly be overstated. Significantly for us, Ryff dedicated the book “to all artistic craftsmen, foremen, stonecutters, builders, headgear makers and gunsmiths […] painters, sculptors, goldsmith, cabinet-makers, and all who have to use the compass and the guiding ruler in an artistic manner” (quoted in Koeppe, 2006, p. 28).

The Lothian Casket well exemplifies the characteristic language of this period in history: pediments, pilasters and arches, but also scrolled foliate brackets and caryatids, and the alternate projecting and recessed components on all four sides speak to this search for architectural magnificence and equilibrium. Similar elements are found on a number of contemporary pieces, such as the Fassadenschrank in the Metropolitan Museum (inv. no. 05.22.2), also probably from Nuremberg - note the characteristic use of foliate brackets and the rhythm given to the front by the alternation of vertical and horizontal features and cornices -; the monumental cabinet by Clement Patel at the Rathaus in Weilheim (1587), with caryatid pilasters (ill. in Kreisel, 1970, fig. 209) and, finally, an Augsburg marquetry cabinet in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (inv. no. W.24:1) featuring an architectural drawer front with rustication.

Comparables

Unlike the Augsburg marquetry produced by numerous workshops over several decades, polyhedral marquetry appears to have been a short-lived phenomenon limited to few spectacular pieces. These include: the games board formerly in Archduke Ferdinand's legendary Kunstkammer at Ambras (Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 3792); a miniature table cabinet from the collection of Albrecht VII, Archduke of Austria (1559-1621) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 48.59.2); a larger cabinet (inv. no. A1451, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Köln; fig. 4); the above-mentioned lectern (Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt), and an identical one in a private German collection (ill. in Hoos, 1989, p. 2233). Finally, two further and impressive games boxes are known, one in a private collection, the other with Galerie J. Kugel, Paris.

The provenance

The casket's early whereabouts and first owners are unknown. It must however have reached England no later than 1730, stylistically the terminus ante quem for the carved walnut stand. Certainly in the possession of the Marquises of Lothian by 1883, the date of the Glasgow Italian Art Loan Exhibition, it may well have entered the family collection during the life of William Kerr, 4^th Marquis of Lothian (1710-1775) via his wife, Lady Caroline Darcy (d. 1778). Lady Caroline’s mother was the notorious Lady Frederica Schomberg (1687-1751), the daughter of the 3^rd Duke of Schomberg, 1^st Duke of Leinster (1641-1719) and the Raugravine Karoline Elisabeth von der Pfalz (1659-1696), herself a daughter of Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine (1617-1680). The casket could have been handed down in the Electoral von der Pfalz family, members of the Bavarian Royal House of Wittelsbach. The English stand was commissioned at some point between Lady Frederica’s marriage to Robert Darcy, 3^rd Earl of Holderness, in 1715, and her daughter's marriage to the then Earl of Ancram in 1735.

One of the oldest families in the Peerage of Scotland, the Kerrs were created Lords Newbattle in 1591 and Earls of Lothian in 1606, holding prominent positions in the government and distinguishing themselves on the diplomatic as well as the battle-field. 

In 1883, Schomberg Kerr, 9^th Marquis of Lothian (1833-1900), lent the casket, then thought to be Italian, to the Glasgow Art Loan Exhibition. Schomberg, Secretary for Scotland between 1887 and 1892 served in Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service in Lisbon, Tehran, Baghdad, Athens, Frankfurt, Madrid and Vienna, and was a cultivated humanist who took an active interest in the family collection, he acquired new pieces, such as the Italian cassone now at Blickling Hall, Norfolk, and which was also lent in 1883, together with a third piece from the collection, the Augsburg table cabinet sold these Rooms, Two Great Scottish Collections: Property from the Forbeses of Pitsligo and the Marquesses of Lothian, 28 March 2017, lot 462. The casket was given a prominent position at Newbattle Abbey, where it is recorded as standing in the hall in the 1901 and 1930 inventories.

The stand

The carved walnut stand relates to a group of carved giltwood tables by or attributed to Moore featuring Indian masks and slender cabriole legs, influenced by designs of Continental ornemanistes such as Le Pautre, although certain solutions adopted here are unprecedented. These include one in the collection of the Dukes of Devonshire at Chatsworth (cf. Bowett, 2009., p. 212), and another sold Sotheby’s, The Contents of Benacre Hall, Suffolk, 9-11 May 2000, lot 34.

Presenting the convenient addition of a feather-banded frieze drawer such as is typically found on contemporary games tables, and the extremely unusual carving of the legs, the stand was undoubtedly conceived to blend with the casket’s architectural outline.

A partner of James Gumley, James Moore (c.1660-1726) became one of the foremost furniture makers in the reign of George I, supplying not only the King but also eminent patrons such as Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu at Boughton House and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough at Blenheim.

Conclusion

A thrilling rediscovery, the Lothian Casket is a rare and idiosyncratic Gesamtkunstwerk representative of a crucial moment in the history of European arts. It perfectly embodies the ideals of the Renaissance, drawing from architecture, sculpture, painting, printing, joinery, from the inanimate and the animate, the vegetal and the animal, and resulting in a multi-layered whole that can be read as a reminder of the complexity of the world. The carved stand further enriches this piece, which, worthy of a prince’s Kunstkammer from its very first conception, received a new lease of life in early Georgian England, and continues to be admired to this day.

Footnotes

¹ See Polybius (14.4ff) and Livy (30.12.11-15.11).

² This in turn is taken from the famous set of four large panels, The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald painted by Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels but destroyed in 1695.

³ Melancholic = air; choleric = fire; phlegmatic = water; sanguine = air.

⁴ The essay further explains the mathematical principles behind the polyhedral of the Frankfurt piece, guided by duality and symmetry principles.