Lidded ewer

BK-1976-75

• duty mark
• signature and date: ‘A.D.Viana.FE. Ao 1614’
• town mark
• maker's mark
• date letter: ‘T’

On this ewer everything is in motion. Animal and human forms emerge from a viscous mass. It is possible that it represents the primordial soup (prima matera) from which life arose according to alchemists. On the inside are two crawling salamanders or lizards: animals that were also thought to originate from non-living matter. Does the ewer establish a link between the creative power of the artist and that of nature?

A. Jensen Adams, Public Faces and Private Identities in Seventeenth-Century Holland, Portraiture and the Production of Community, New York 2009, p. 184, fig. 51

silversmith: Adam van Vianen (I), Utrecht

1614

height 25.0 cm x width 14.0 cm x depth 9.0 cm x weight 910.0 gr

Deze kan stond opgesteld in de gildekamer van de Amsterdamse goud- en zilversmeden.

Purchased with the support of the Prins Bernhard Fonds, the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

purchase 1976-10-19

Public domain

• A. Jensen Adams, Public Faces and Private Identities in Seventeenth-Century Holland, Portraiture and the Production of Community, New York 2009, p. 184, fig. 51
• R.J. Baarsen, bespreking van J.R. ter Molen, Van Vianen. Een Utrechtse familie van zilversmeden met een internationale faam, 2 dln., Leiden 1984, in: Oud Holland 100 (1986), p. 77-79., afb. 1,2.
• J.R. ter Molen, 'Adam van Vianen's silverware in relation to seventeenth century Dutch painting', Apollo 110 (1979), 482-488, afb. 1.
• T. Milnes Gaskell, 'Documentary silver-gilt ewer', Christie's review of the season 1977, London, 1977, p. 170-171.
• Th.M. Duyvené de Wit-Klinkhamer, 'Een vermaarde zilveren beker', Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 17 (1966), p. 79-103.
• Verslag van de Vereniging Rembrandt over 1976, p. 60.
• A.L. den Blaauwen, 'Een onbekende prent van Adam van Vianen', Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 4 (1956), p. 32.
• Nederlandse Musea in 1976, IIC, 's-Gravenhage, 1978, p. 20-21.

To refer to this object, please use the following persistent URL:

https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200113496