Grotesque Animal, Oil Lamp

Solid cast with two voids (?), caused by shrinkage during the solidification process.¹¹R. van Langh in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, fig. 41a. The surface of the bronze is extensively hammered, possibly to resemble the texture of a scaly skin. Traces of green corrosion visible all over the surface are probably due to an artificial patination intended to give the object the appearance of an Antique bronze. The alloy indicates a cast from The Netherlands or possibly France, made in first half of the 17th century.²²Written communication Arie Pappot, 28 September 2020.
Alloy brass alloy with some lead; copper with some impurities (Cu 82.33%; Zn 15.55%; Sn 0.33%; Pb 1.06%; Sb 0.06%; As 0.13%; Fe 0.38%; Ni 0.06%; Ag 0.08%).

R. van Langh in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 41 on p. 166 and fig. 41a on p. 169; D. Allen et al. (eds.), Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, coll. cat. New York 2022, p. 489 and fig. 187a

…; from the dealer Alavoine, Paris, Ffrs. 6,800, to the museum, with the support of the Stichting voor Fotoverkoop, 1969

ObjectNumber: BK-1969-4

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

This small oil lamp is in the tradition of grotesque all’antica bronze oil lamps of various sizes that were made in large numbers in Northern Italian, particularly Paduan, workshops.³³S. Ebert-Schifferer (ed.), Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, exh. cat. Frankfurt am Main (Liebieghaus) 1985, nos. 202-26 and H. Frosien-Leinz, ‘Antikisches Gebrauchsgerät: Weisheit und Magie in den Öllampen Riccios’, in ibid., pp. 226-57. The elaborately embellished large examples made by Riccio would also actually have worked,⁴⁴A. Radcliffe, ‘Bronze Oil Lamps by Riccio’, Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook 3 (1972), pp. 29-58. but the numerous mass-produced small lamps were probably intended purely as amusing curiosities for collectors and not as functional artefacts. Many of the small lamps have a comic-erotic or indecent shape,⁵⁵S. Ebert-Schifferer (ed.), Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, exh. cat. Frankfurt am Main (Liebieghaus) 1985, nos. 220-21. or are produced in the form of grotesque animals⁶⁶A. Radcliffe and N. Penny, Art of the Renaissance Bronze 1500-1650: The Robert H. Smith Collection, coll. cat. Washington 2004, nos. 7, 8. and caricatured Moor and satyr heads.⁷⁷S. Ebert-Schifferer (ed.), Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, exh. cat. Frankfurt am Main (Liebieghaus) 1985, nos. 210-12, 217, 223-25. Through their exotic iconography they refer to a world in which desires were not held in check, and Nature was still in disorder and inhabited by monstrous hybrid creatures.⁸⁸D. Blume, ‘Beseelte Natur und ländliche Idylle’, in S. Ebert-Schifferer (ed.), Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, exh. cat. Frankfurt am Main (Liebieghaus) 1985, pp. 173-97. The Latin inscription VITA QVID ALIVD (Life, what else?) on a small lamp in the shape of a reclining monster, for instance, hints at this.⁹⁹A. Radcliffe and N. Penny, Art of the Renaissance Bronze 1500-1650: The Robert H. Smith Collection, coll. cat. Washington 2004, no. 7. Drôleries and grotesques traditionally inhabited a shadowy fringe, from where they could give a sardonic and ironic commentary on the serious world.¹⁰¹⁰M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art, London 1992.

The small Amsterdam oil lamp, of which there are no other casts known, differs from the majority of Italian examples because it has been designed as a standing figure, a satyr-like animal bending forward. Standing lamps seem chiefly to have been made outside Italy. There is, for example, a similarity in size and pose to a small lamp in the former Abbot Guggenheim collection. That one is shaped as a standing satyr-like dwarf dressed as a bishop with an enormous phallus and a lion’s head with gaping mouth.¹¹¹¹L. Camins, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, exh. cat. San Francisco (M.H. de Young Memorial Museum) 1988, no. 38. It is a visual pun on the Latin word cornutus, which means both mitred bishop and cuckold (betrayed husband, idiot) and because of this sardonic iconographic reference to the Roman Catholic Church a provenance from the Protestant Netherlands or Germany is likely for this example. The current attribution to Cornelis Floris II (1514-1575) is not convincing, however. A related lamp in Berlin (fig. a) – a small standing monster with goat’s legs – was also attributed to Floris, but is in fact entirely consistent with grotesque designs by Arent van Bolten (c. 1573-before 1633).¹²¹²P. Bloch, Ex Aere Solido: Bronzen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, exh. cat. Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum)/Saarbrücken (Saarland-Museum)/Hanover (Kestner-Museum) 1983, no. 90. Two Italian oil lamps can be regarded as southern predecessors of the Amsterdam lamp. They have the appearance of reclining monsters, and in terms of pose and modelling – notice for example the pronounced, wrinkled back and spine – are similar to the satyr lamp.¹³¹³A. Radcliffe and N. Penny, Art of the Renaissance Bronze 1500-1650: The Robert H. Smith Collection, coll. cat. Washington 2004, no. 8.

On the grounds of the overall similarities to a number of larger bronze oil lamps or grotesque beasts that were associated with Van Bolten, Leeuwenberg also attributed the Rijksmuseum lamp to this sculptor and silversmith from Zwolle.¹⁴¹⁴J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 221. The little lamp shares with Van Bolten’s designs the penchant for the grotesque, and the liking for sinuous forms that tend towards the auricular style. All the same the differences between this piece and his work are just as striking as the similarities – the much smaller size, the manufacture with a painstakingly hammered surface to give the suggestion of a scaly skin, the less fluid modelling, the static pose and the round base on which the satyr stands and which supports his outstretched head. For the time being there are too few points in common with Van Bolten’s work to support the attribution.

The shape and the static position suggest that the bronze was at one time designed to be mounted on a larger object, for example as a supporting or crowning component of a table ornament, a Kunstkammer object or a piece of furniture. A sketch for a salt attributed to the Augsburg artist Hans Friedrich Schorer (c. 1585-after 1654) gives an impression of this sort of application (fig. b).¹⁵¹⁵T. DaCosta Kaufmann, Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire 1540-1680: A Selection from North American Collections, Princeton 1982, no. 37. The receptacle of this piece is supported by a series of squatting sphinxes-cum-oil lamps which here probably functioned as individual salt cellars. It is not impossible that the Amsterdam lamp is an independently conceived replica of an applied figure like this. A provenance from the Netherlands around 1610-30 is likely.

Frits Scholten, 2024
An earlier version of this entry was published in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 41

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 221, with earlier literature; Scholten in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 41

F. Scholten, 2024, 'circle of Arent van Bolten, Grotesque Animal, Oil Lamp, Low Countries, c. 1610 - c. 1650', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24511