Italian, Paduan, Early 16th Century

Francis II of Habsburg (1768–1835), Holy Roman Emperor (1792–1806), Archduke of Austria (1804–1835);

Thence by descent to his son Ferdinand I of Habsburg (1793–1875), Emperor of Austria (1835–1848);

Thence by inheritance to his nephew, Franz Joseph I of Habsburg (1830–1916), Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, of Croatia and of Bohemia (1848–1916);

Innsbruck, Schloss Ambras, from 1880;

Vienna, Lower Belvedere Palace, Antikenkabinett in 1880;

With Kunsthandel A.G., Lucerne 1923;

With Galerie Kunsthandel A.G., represented by Julius Wilhelm Bohler and Schwager Fritz Steinmeyer (in Lucerne);

Edmond Cormier-Thierry-Delanoue (1879-1960), Montfort-l’Amaury, Capuchin convent;

Thence by descent to his son Christian Cormier-Thierry-Delanoue (1928-2010), Fribourg;

Thence by descent to his daughter "MC";

Paris, Christie's, 13-19 May 2020, lot 114 (as three animals in bronze: Japan, Meiji period, 19th century. The first depicting a turtle represented in a naturalistic way, an inscription with three characters in its cartridge on the stomach. The second depicting a buffalo; small restorations on the cartridge. The third depicting a crab forming a box; small inclusions on the legs. L.: 30 cm., 20.5 cm. and 15 cm.), unsold;

Paris, Thierry De Maigret, 2 April 2021, lot 386 (as Japan - Meiji period, 1868-1912. Bronze okimono with brown patina in the shape of a crab, the shell opening. inclusions on legs. H: 5 - L: 15 - D: 10 cm);

Where acquired.

Bronze crabs are a category of early Italian bronzes that has received little attention in recent years, however, they are rare and fascinating objects evocative of the cultured world of the Renaissance scholar’s studiolo and the erudite setting of the Kunstkammer. These crabs are comparable to bronze casts of snakes, toads, lizards and crayfish in their facture as life casts, that is cast from the animal themselves. Unlike most of these other animals, the crustaceans are invariably made to be functional objects. In this way their body cavity opens to form a receptacle for fine sand to be used by a scribe to dry freshly written ink.

Recent research has established a corpus of around only 20 bronze crabs made in Italy during the early 16^th century preserved in public collections in Europe and the USA. In the early 20^th century, Wilhelm von Bode attributed these crabs to Andrea Riccio, while Leo Planiscig relegated them to Riccio’s workshop. Current scholarship has followed Manfred Leithe-Jasper’s opinion that the crabs were rather made in Padua as part of the tradition in Northern Italian foundries for the creation of ‘functional’ bronzes in the form of animals, shells and mythological figures. The crab would have formed part of an elegant writing set that would have included a box for pens, an inkwell and pen holder, perhaps in the form of shells.

One of the most outstanding examples of this genre is a Renaissance bronze crab in the National Gallery in Washington (inv. 1957.14.87), which depicts the creature attacking a toad, with it's claws pulling at the toad’s mouth which opens to form a receptacle for a pen, or quill. All the other known Renaissance examples are individual animals, like the present very fine cast.

Of the six crabs documented in the Habsburg collections from the early 19^th century, one was acquired in 1803 from an unknown source, two were acquired in 1808 from the collection of Joseph Angelo de Fance (1691-1761), restorer to Marie-Thérèse of Austria, and the remaining three entered the collections at some time before. It is impossible to distinguish the individual crabs from the generic descriptions in the inventories, so the present bronze may have been part of the historic Imperial collections for several centuries. Each crab has a four-digit red inventory number starting ‘59’. Two are sequential, invs. 5926 and 5927, and may be assumed to be the two crabs that came from Joseph Angelo de France. One other, inv. 5922, is sequentially separated from the remaining three, and may be assumed to be the 1803 crab. Therefore, inv. nos. 5902, 5905 and 5909, which include the present crab, could be deduced to be the three with the longest history in the Habsburg collections. This is supported by information provided by Dr Konrad Schlegel, curator at the Kunsthisorisches Museum, Vienna, who has identified the inventory number 5905 being used for the first time in 1896: ‘Bronzenbüsche in Gesalt eines Taschenkrebses, der Rücken als Deckel zum Oeffnen, über der Natur gegossen. Deutsch, XVII. Jahrh. Br. 150mm.’ (see Albert ilg, Uebersicht des Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, Vienna, 1891. This entry also gives the indication that the present bronze was formerly part of the collections at Schloss Ambras from the concordance of its earlier inventory number: A. 1880 VI, 514.

The origin of the three earliest crabs in the Imperial Habsburg collection can only be a matter of speculation. It is possible that they were already acquired by Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595) who was an avid collector and whose collection was initially housed at Innsbruck, before moving to Scholss Ambras in 1580. These bronze crustaceans would have fit in perfectly to Ferdinand II’s large Wunderkammer that was matched only by another possible early source for the crabs’ arrival into the Imperial collection: Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612). Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer, located in Prague, was renowned for its quality and range of objects. These naturalistic bronzes resonate with Rudolf II’s fascination with all forms of artificialia and naturalia. After 1595 the former collections of Ferdinand II from Schloss Ambras were purchased by Rudolf II by which time the three bronzes were almost certainly part of the Imperial collections that were later to form the nucleus of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. By the end of the 19^th century these collections were housed in the Lower Belvedere Palace in Vienna, before being moved to the Kunstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which was opened to the public in 1891. Thirty-two years later, on 23 June 1923, the museum acquired a bronze relief of the Miracle of St Agnes by Alessandro Algardi by making an exchange with four bronzes from the collection, one of which was the present crab. Thus, the bronze left the museum and was acquired by the dealers Julius Wilhelm Böhler and Schwager Fritz Steinmeyer who ran the company Kunsthandels A.G. based in Lucerne, Switzerland before entering the collection of the Cormier-Theirry-Delanoue family.