Adam van Vianen

This monumental silver work of art plays with our perception in all manner of ways. For example, the ewer is not meant as a jug for pouring, but as a cup to drink out of. What is depicted is also ambiguous: on closer inspection, everything we think we recognize appears to be made up of different creatures.

The lizards chased in the ewer’s liner are a direct reference to the art of Paulus van Vianen. Just as the animal comes to life through the power of the sun, so does the silversmith breathe life into the silver with the help of fire. The variety of shapes and ornamentation on the outer surface thus represent the gold- and silversmith’s brilliant imagination and creative force.

Adam van Vianen here combined a brilliant concept and consummate execution with a statement in technique. The body of this ewer is not composed of different parts, but raised from a single sheet of silver, including its base and handle. Everything you see is chased, created by the silversmith with a hammer and a host of chisels and punches.

Paulus van Vianen was the first to use this kind of dream-like imagery around 1600. In Paulus’ works of art it plays a supporting role, while Adam shifted the accent, privileging the ornamentation.

The interplay between form and ornamentation can be discerned already in the work of Adam van Vianen, proving that the brothers knew what the other was doing. Just look at the wine cooler in the foreground of the scene depicted in the tazza; here, too, the main form dissolves into a flowing substance in which recognizable body parts are incorporated.

Adam van Vianen’s experiments reflect the ideas of the Haarlem and Utrecht academies of painting, with which he was also associated. In 1605, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem dedicated a print to Van Vianen. And, together with other artists, the gold- and silversmith celebrated Gerard van Honthorst’s return from Italy in 1620.

By repeatedly combining auricular motifs with other elements, Adam van Vianen could depict narratives. Here it is the cycle of life. At one end of the tazza a child is conceived and born, while the wine cup’s shape refers to death. The faces on the foot represent the stages of life.

The wonders of nature were also a source of inspiration for Van Vianen. In the 17th century, the Harpa Major was considered one of the most beautiful and precious exotic shells, and is reproduced here by the silversmith down to the smallest detail. Fighting mermen and a fleeing mermaid transport the shell cup to the realm of fantasy, while at the same time referring to the shellfish’s habitat.

By transforming compositions into other sizes, materials and techniques Adam van Vianen pushed the boundaries of his field. With the story of Cain and Abel he adhered to a tradition in Italian sculpture, and with its pendant of Abraham and Isaac to one found in Southern Netherlandish painting. He thereby demonstrated that gold-and silversmiths disposed over other means that what was available to sculptors and painters, and thus established gold- and silversmithing as an independent art form.

Poems, portraits and biographies extolled Adam van Vianen, while series of reproductions of his work guaranteed that the reason for his fame would never be forgotten. He thus became the exemplar of an exceptional movement in Dutch gold-and silversmithing, and his family name developed into a generic term for all works of art in silver.