Waddesdon Bequest

In 1898 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild bequeathed to the British Museum the contents from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor as the Waddesdon Bequest. This consisted of a wide-ranging collection of almost 300 pieces of 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. And it was Europe of the late Renaissance period that supplied the majority of the objects, although there are several important medieval pieces, and outliers from classical antiquity and medieval Persia.^[1]

Baron Ferdinand's bequest was most specific, and failure to observe the terms would make it void. It stated that the collection should be

placed in a special room to be called the Waddesdon Bequest Room separate and apart from the other contents of the Museum and thenceforth for ever thereafter, keep the same in such room or in some other room to be substituted for it.^[1]

These terms are still observed, and until late 2014 the collection was shown in room 45, in a display opened in 1973.^[2] It is now, in early 2015, not on display, while a new gallery on the ground floor is prepared; this is planned to open in June 2015. Until the Chinese ceramics collection of the Percival David Foundation moved to the British Museum the Waddesdon Bequest was the only collection segregated in this way.^[3]

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 (WB.1); arms, armour and ironwork (WB.5); enamels (WB.19); glass (WB.53); Italian maiolica (WB.60); "Cups etc in gold and hard stone" (WB.66); silver plate (WB.87); jewellery (WB.147); cutlery (WB.201); "caskets, etc" (WB.217); carvings in wood and stone (WB.231-265). The groupings include some surprises: there is no group for paintings, and WB.174, a portrait miniature on vellum in a wooden frame, is included with the jewellery, though this is because the subject is wearing a pendant in the collection.^[4]

The collection was assembled for a particular place, and to reflect a particular aesthetic; other parts of Ferdinand de Rothschild's collection contain objects in very different styles, and the Bequest should not be taken to reflect the totality of his taste. Here what most appealed to Ferdinand de Rothschild were intricate, superbly executed, highly decorated and rather ostentatious works of the Late Gothic, Renaissance and Mannerist periods. Few of the objects could be said to rely on either simplicity or Baroque sculptural movement for their effect, though several come from periods and places where much Baroque work was being made.^[5]

Renaissance metalwork

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 virtuouso displays of goldsmiths' technique; rather too heavily for conventional modern taste. They are certainly ostentious 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.^[6]

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.^[7]

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 are typical of the taste of the Renaissance "age of discovery" and show the schatzkammer and the cabinet of curiosities overlapping.^[8] 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; there are separate figures of a boar and stags for him to pursue.^[9]

One of the most important objects in the collection is a parade shield, never intended for use in battle, designed and 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 Budapest, this is the only surviving damascened metalwork by Ghisi. The shield, is made of iron, hammered in relief, 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.^[10]

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.^[11]

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  Two tall covered cups of ostrich eggs with mounts in silver-gilt

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  Top of the silver-gilt Aspremont-Lynden ewer, WB.89, Antwerp, mid-16th century

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  Damascened iron plaque for a barding, showing Marcus Curtius, WB.15, Milan, 1560–70

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  Detail from the Ghisi shield; a grotesque head in the larger scale above Horatius at the bridge in the smaller

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  Part of a set of 12 silver-gilt tazze, Augsberg, end of 16th century

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  Olympian scenes on a basin

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  Ewer with its basin above. German, 1559

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  The bell by Wenzel Jamnitzer, once owned by Horace Walpole and discussed below

Renaissance enamels

Though the Waddesdon Bequest contains two very important medieval objects with enamel, and much of the jewellery and decorated cutlery uses enamel heavily, the great majority of the items that can be called "enamels" are in the French 16th century style that was led by Limoges enamel, painted with highly detailed figurative scenes or decorative schemes. As with Italian maiolica, the imagery tended to be drawn from classical mythology or allegory, though the bequest includes some Old Testament scenes, and compositions were very often drawn from German, French or Italian prints. Enamels were produced in workshops which often persisted in the same family for several generations, and are often signed in the enamel, or identifiable, at least as far as the family or workshop, by punch marks on the back of panels, as well as by style. Leading artists represented in the collection include Suzanne de Court, Pierre Reymond, Jean de Court, Pierrre Courtois and Léonard Limousin.^[12]

Enamels were made as objects such as candlesticks, dishes, vessels and mirrors, and also as flat plaques to be included in other objects such as caskets. The collection includes all these types, with both unmounted plaques and caskets fitted with plaques. The jolly grotesques illustrated at right are on the reverse of a large dish whose main face shows a brightly-coloured depiction of the Destruction of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.^[13] Both designs are closely paralleled, without being exactly copied, in pieces in other collections, notably one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The designs are also based on prints, but adapted by the enamellers for their pieces.^[14]

The Casket of the Sybyls is an elaborate small locking casket with a framework of silver-gilt and gems, set with grisaille panels with touches of gold and flesh-tints. It represents the sophisticated court taste of about 1535, and was probably intended for a lady's jewels. Most such sets of enamel inserts have lost the settings they were intended for.^[15]

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  Triumph of Caesar, Limoges c. 1550, attributed to Pierre Reymond, one of a set

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  Diane de Poitiers, in a chariot drawn by lions, Limoges c. 1600, attributed to Francois Limousin, WB.39

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  Jupiter, flanked by reading clerics with asses ears, rear of WB.30

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  Detail of dish with scene from the Book of Revelations, Limoges c. 1580, attributed to Pierre Courtois

Jewellery

The collection of jewellery was formed for display (and in a specifically male setting) rather than for wearing, and there is little interest shown in gemstones and pearls for their own sake. The emphasis is very firmly on spectacular badges and pendant jewels of the late Renaissance in what is known as the "Spanish Style" that was adopted throughout Europe between about 1550 and 1630, using gems together with gold and enamel to create dazzling tiny sculptures. These have survived more often than styles emphasizing gem stones and massy gold, which were typically recycled for their materials when fashion changed. These were worn by both men and women.^[16]

Many of the pieces are Spanish, though it is not easy to place the country of manufacture. There is no such difficulty with the most famous jewel in the collection, the Lyte Jewel which was presented to Thomas Lyte of Lytes Cary, Somerset in 1610 by King James I of England, a great lover and giver of large jewels. Lyte had drawn up a family tree tracing James' descent back to the legendary Trojan Brut. The jewel contains a miniature portrait of the king by Nicolas Hilliard, though for conservation reasons this is now removed from the jewel. Lyte wears the jewel in a portrait of 1611, showing a drop below the main oval set with three diamonds, which had gone before 1882. The front cover has an elaborate openwork design with James' monogram IR, while the back has very finely executed enamel decoration.^[17]

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  Pendant with mounted cupid, German, late 16th century, WB.160

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  Enamelled cover of an English locket, 1630s, with miniature of the Royalist general Sir Bevil Grenville, WB.168

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  Pendant with mounted warrior, German, mid-16th century, WB.161

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  Back of the Lyte Jewel

Objects from before the Renaissance

The collection includes an eclectic group of objects of very high quality that predate the Renaissance. The oldest objects are a set of four Hellenistic bronze medallions with heads projecting in very high relief, and round handles hanging below. These date to the century before Christ, and came from a tomb in modern Turkey, and were fixtures for some wooden object, perhaps a chest. The heads are identified as Ariadne, Dionysos, Persephone and Pluto.^[18] The carved agate body of WB.68 may be late Roman, and is discussed below.

The Palmer Cup is an important early Islamic glass cup, made around 1200, in Syria or perhaps Egypt, and painted in enamels. In the same century it was given a silver-gilt and rock crystal stem and foot in France. Below a poetic Arabic inscription praising wine-drinking, a seated prince holding a cup or glass is flanked by five standing attendants, two playing castanets and the others holding weapons. As an early painted image the cup is extremely rare in Islamic glass, although similar images in Islamic pottery of the period are found. There are a handful of comparable early Islamic painted glass cups that have survived in old European collections, such as the Luck of Edenhall in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and others in the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden and the Louvre, and others are recorded in old inventories. Often these were given a new foot in metalwork in Europe, as here.^[19] There is also a large mosque lamp with enamelled decoration from the late 14th century.^[20]

Romanesque art is represented by an unusually large Limoges enamel reliquary in the common chasse shape, like a gabled house. This was made in about 1170 to hold relics of Saint Valerie of Limoges, a virgin-martyr of the Roman period who was the most important local saint of Limoges, a key centre for Romanesque champlevé enamel. Her highly visual story is told in several scenes that use a wide range of colours, with the rest of the front face decorated in the "vermicular" style, with the space between the figure filled with scrolling motifs on a gold background. St Valerie was a cephalophore saint, who after she was beheaded carried her own head to give to her bishop, Saint Martial, who had converted her.^[21]

There are many more objects in a Gothic style, and as is typical for northern Europe several of these come from well into the 16th century, and should be considered as belonging to the Northern Renaissance. However the most important medieval object, and arguably the most important single piece in the collection, though from the late Gothic period, has nothing strictly Gothic in its style, and represents a very advanced court taste in this respect. This is the Holy Thorn Reliquary, which was probably created in the 1390s in Paris for the Valois prince John, Duke of Berry, to house a relic of the Crown of Thorns. It is one of a small number of major goldsmiths' works or joyaux that survive from the extravagant world of the courts of the Valois royal family around 1400. It is made of gold, lavishly decorated with jewels and pearls, and uses the technique of enamelling en ronde bosse, or "in the round", which had been recently developed when the reliquary was made, to create a total of 28 three-dimensional figures, mostly in white enamel.^[22]

In contrast, two highly elaborate metalwork covers for the treasure bindings of the Epistle and Gospel books for the high altar of a large church, probably Ulm Minster, were made around 1506 but are full of spiky Gothic architectural details, although the many figures in high relief are on the verge of Renaissance style.^[23]

There are two German statues of saints in wood, about half life-size, from the decades around 1500,^[24] and a larger number of miniature box wood carvings of superb quality from around 1490 to 1530. These fit dozens of tiny figures into scenes two or three inches across, and were a fashion among royalty; they were apparently made in the southern Netherlands.^[25]

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  Hellenistic bronze fittings, with Persephone and Pluto

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  St Valerie as cephalophore, carrying her own head to her bishop, Saint Martial

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  Seated prince on the Palmer Cup

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  Resurrection of the Dead at the base of the Holy Thorn Reliquary

Rock crystal and hardstone pieces

There are seven glass vessels in the collection, but a larger number of pieces in transparent rock crystal that might easily be taken for glass. This was always a much more valuable material, and is less easy to break, and the pieces include mounts or bases in precious metal, which none of the actual glass has; nor are the rock crystal pieces painted. Read's catalogue groups these and other pieces in semi-precious stone with the objects in gold, as opposed to the "silver plate", which probably reflects how a Renaissance collector would have ranked them. There are ten pieces in crystal and nine in other stones.^[26]

Two crystal pieces are plain oval plaques engraved with figurative scenes, a different tradition going back to pieces such as the Carolingian Lothair Crystal, also in the British Museum.^[27] In 1902 Read's catalogue suggested that "It is to this section that in all probability most eyes will be attracted, as well for the beauty of the specimens as for their rarity and consequent cost"; if this was the case then, it is probably not so a century later.^[28] Some pieces are now regarded as 19th century, or largely so,^[29] and Reinhold Vasters, the Van Meegeren of Renaissance metalwork, is now held responsible in several cases.^[30]

A wide low crystal vase with cover is engraved with the name of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, and was long thought to have been German, but sent out to India as a diplomatic gift, as the metalwork mounts are clearly European in style. It is now seen as an original, and exceptionally rare, Mughal crystal carving, to which the mounts were added in the 19th century, perhaps in Paris. However the cartouche with Akbar's name does not seem to specialists correct for a contemporary court piece, and the vase in India was probably carved after his reign (1556–1605), and the name perhaps added even later.^[31]

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  Rock crystal covered cup

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  Jade, early 17th century, the handle later, WB.81, Milan or Prague

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  Rock crystal bucket, early 17th century, the handle perhaps later, WB.81

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  Detail of a silver Neptune in the mount of a crystal piece, probably by Reinhold Vasters about 1865–70, despite spurious 16th-century marks on the metal.^[1]

1. ^ WB.122

Renaissance glass

Apart from the two pieces of Islamic glass described above, there are five Renaissance or Baroque glass vessels, all unusual and of exceptional quality. Most are Venetian glass; one might be Venetian or Bohemian glass (WB.56) and is now dated to the 17th century. There is a very rare goblet in opaque turquoise glass with enamel painted over (WB.55); this was to imitate or suggest a vessel in even more expensive semi-precious stone.^[32] The Deblin Cup with its cover is one of a small group of vessels made in Venice in a German or Central European taste, drawing on metalwork shapes used there. It carries an added inscription in Czech urging that the health of the Lords of Deblín, near Brno, be drunk, and was probably the "welcome cup" of the castle there.^[33]

Italian maiolica

The six pieces of painted Italian maiolica, or painted and tin-glazed earthenware, are all larger than the average, and there are none of the dishes that are the most common maiolica shape. The earliest piece is a large statue of Fortuna standing on a dolphin, holding a sail, by Giovanni della Robbia, made in Florence about 1500-10.^[34] This is a rare representative of the Early to High Renaissance in the Bequest.

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  Goblet in opaque turquoise glass with enamel painted over (WB.55)

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  Maiolica pilgrim bottle, 1560–70

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  Fortuna standing on a dolphin, in maiolica, Florence, 1500–10

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  Maiolica vase, 1560–70, with the unusual addition of metal mounts, probably 18th century

Other types of object

The collection includes a number of other objects, with a few guns, swords and military or hunting equipment. There is also a German brass "hunting calendar" with several thin leaves that unfold. These include recessed lines filled with wax, enabling the keen hunter on a large scale to record his bags of wolf, bear, deer, boar and rabbit, as well as the performance of his dogs.^[35] There is a small cabinet with 11 drawers (plus other secret ones) made as a classical facade, or perhaps a theatre stage with scenery; the decoration is mostly damascened iron, and is 16th-century Milanese work.^[36]

Apart from the older woodcarvings discussed above, the bequest includes a number of small mostly German Renaissance portraits as carvings in wood, either in relief or in the round. These are of very high quality and include two miniature busts by Conrad Meit of Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, who died young before the bust was made, and his Habsburg wife, Margaret of Austria.^[37] There are also some medallion portraits in very soft stone, that allows fine detail, and one allegorical scene attributed to Peter Flötner.^[38]

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  Stocks of two German inlaid guns

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  Boxwood miniature, German, 1544

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  Portrait miniature in stone, 1544, Sigmund Pfinzing, aged 79, WB.255

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  Enamelled gold miniature of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, 1627, WB.173

Fakes and revised attributions

Any collection formed before the 20th century (and many later ones) is likely to contain pieces that can no longer sustain their original attributions. In general the Waddesdon Bequest can be said to have held up well in this regard, and the most significant brush with forgery has been to benefit the collection. In 1959 it was confirmed that the Waddesdon Holy Thorn Reliquary had been in the Habsburg Imperial Schatzkammer ("treasure chamber") in Vienna from 1677 onwards. It remained in Vienna until after 1860, when it appeared in an exhibition. Some time after this it was sent to be restored by Salomon Weininger, an art dealer with access to skilled craftsmen, who secretly made a number of copies.^[40] He was later convicted of other forgeries, and died in prison in 1879, but it was still not realised that he had returned one of his copies of the reliquary to the Imperial collections instead of the original, and later sold the original, which is now in the Bequest.^[41] One of the copies remained in the Ecclesiastical Treasury of the Imperial Habsburg Court in Vienna, where the deception remained undetected for several decades.^[42]

Another object with a complicated and somewhat uncertain history is a two-handled agate vase with Renaissance-style metal mounts, which was acquired, with other similar pieces, for Waddesdon from the Duke of Devonshire's collection in about 1897, not long before Baron Ferdinand's death. Sir Hugh Tait's 1991 catalogue says of the vase:

"Origin:

(i) Carved agate: authenticity is uncertain; since 1899 loosely described as "antique Roman" or "antique", but recently attributed to the late Roman period, c. AD 400.

(ii) Enamelled gold mounts and cover: previously described as "Italian, 16th century" and, subsequently, attributed to Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71) but now attributed to the hand of an early 19th-century copyist – before 1834 – perhaps working in London."

As he describes, it was Tait who overturned the attribution to Cellini in 1971.^[43]

In a collection of Renaissance metalwork Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71) represents the ultimate attribution, as his genuine works as a goldsmith are more rare than paintings by Giorgione. In his 1902 catalogue Charles Hercules Read mentions that many of the pendants had been attributed to Cellini, but refrains from endorsing the attributions.^[44] A small silver hand-bell (WB.95) had belonged to Horace Walpole, who praised it extravagantly in a letter as "the uniquest thing in the world, a silver bell for an inkstand made by Benvenuto Cellini. It makes one believe all the extravagant encomiums he bestoys on himself; indeed so does his Perseus. Well, my bell is in the finest taste, and is swarmed by caterpillars, lizards, grasshoppers, flies, and masques, that you would take it for one of the plagues of Egypt. They are all in altissimo, nay in outissimo relievo and yet almost invisible but with a glass. Such foliage, such fruitage!". However Baron Ferdinand had realized that it was more likely to be by Wenzel Jamnitzer, goldsmith to the Emperor Rudolf II, to whom it is still attributed.^[45] Another piece no longer attributed to Cellini is a large bronze door-knocker, with a figure of Neptune, 40 cm high, and weighing over 11 kilos.^[46]

One category of the bequest that has seen several demotions is the 16 pieces and sets of highly decorated cutlery (WB.201-216). Read dated none of these later than the 17th century, but on the British Museum database in 2014 several were dated to the 19th century, and were recent fraudulent creations when they entered the collection, some made by Reinhold Vasters.^[47] Doubts have also been raised over a glass cup and cover bearing the date 1518 (WB.59), which might in fact be 19th-century.^[48] Eight pieces of silver plate were redated to the 19th century by Hugh Tait, and some of the jewellery.

Notes

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References

• Cherry, John. The Holy Thorn Reliquary, 2010, British Museum Press (British Museum objects in focus), ISBN 0-7141-2820-1
• Read, Sir Charles Hercules, The Waddesdon Bequest: Catalogue of the Works of Art bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, M.P., 1898, 1902, British Museum, Fully available on the Internet Archive The catalogue numbers here are still used, and may be searched for on the BM website as "WB.1" etc.
• Tait, Hugh, The Waddesdon Bequest, 1981, British Museum Publications, ISBN 0-7141-1357-3
• Thornton, Dora, A Rothschild Renaissance: The Waddesdon Bequest, 2015, British Museum, ISBN 978-0-7141-2345-5
• Vincent, Clare, in The Robert Lehman Collection: Decorative arts. XV (Volume 15 of The Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art; several authors), 2012, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ISBN 1-58839-450-6, 9781588394507, google books

Further reading

• Tait, Hugh, A Catalogue of the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, several volumes, British Museum. Volumes: I, The Jewels, 1986; II The Silver Plate, 1988; III The Curiosities, 1991. Generous extracts from these volumes are given at many entries on the British Museum collection database, usually under "Curator's comments". The catalogue does not cover the full collection.
• Thornton, Dora, "From Waddesdon to the British Museum: Baron Ferdinand Rothschild and his cabinet collection", Journal of the History of Collections, 2001, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp. 191-213, doi: 10.1093/jhc/13.2.191

External links

• For the boxwood carvings: "The Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum Part 1 by Mark V Braimbridge" and Part 2, website of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society, reprinted from their journal Topiarius Vol. 14 Summer 2010 pp. 15-17, and Topiarius Vol. 15 (2011) pp. 20-23. Good photos of the boxwood carvings.