WORKSHOP OF JACOPO STRADA | Four elaborate silver designs, including a design for a flask with the drunken Silenus riding a panther with satyrs and putti

For the four Workshop of Jacopo Strada designs: Einar Perman, Stockholm;
sale, Milan, Finarte, 4 December 1986, lot 234 (as Salviati) and others (untraced)

The candlestand:
J.F Hayward, Virtuoso Goldsmiths and the Triumph of Mannerism 1540-1620, London 1976, p. 347, no. 89, fig. 89, reproduced

Measurements: Design for a flask with drunken Bacchus riding a panther - 431 by 280 mm Design for a flask with drunken Bacchus supported by putti - 429 by 277 mm Design for an elaborate candlestand - 425 by 259 mm Design for a footed basin - 415 by 544 mm Florentine School, late 16th Century - 335 by 245 mm
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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."

Sold together with a further silver design, Florentine School, late 16th Century (pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk, 335 by 245 mm). The four silver designs, here attributed to the Workshop of Jacopo Strada, exemplify the enormous significance of lavishly ornamented precious metal objects, created or recorded in elaborate studies by skilful Mannerist goldsmiths, at the wealthy and powerful European courts of the mid-sixteenth Century.

Strada was born in Mantua circa 1515, from a family of Dutch origin, and received his training as a goldsmith and painter in the workshop of Giulio Romano, benefitting, like his master, from the courtly patronage of Mantua's powerful ruling family, the Gonzagas.

Recent scholarship has shed further light on elements of Strada's graphic oeuvre, perhaps most notably a fascinating folio of 37 drawings, published by Sarah Lawrence in 2007, to coincide with their exhibition in San Francisco.¹ Two of the drawings that make up the present lot are alternative versions of designs from that group,² and help to further emphasise the fluid nature of these designs within the artist's workshop.

Intriguingly there also survive a small group of silver designs that have been attributed to Ottavio Strada, the son of Jacopo, which can be compared both on stylistic grounds and in their characteristic numbering, to those in the present lot. Two such designs are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,³ whilst a further example is in the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.<sup>4

1.</sup> S. Lawrence, Jacopo Strada (1510-1588), Mannerist Splendor: Extravagant Designs for a Royal Table, San Francisco 2007
^2. Ibid., pp. 91-92 (Design for a flask with the drunken Silenus supported by putti) and 92-93 (Design for a flask with the drunken Silenus riding a panther), reproduced
^3. Ibid., p. 17, fig. 3, reproduced; Inv. nos. 66.618.8 and 66.618.2
^4. Ibid., p. 20, fig. 4, reproduced; Inv. no. 1996-20-1