Karel Citroen

In 1988 and 1989 the painting to be discussed in these pages (fig. 1) was shown at three venues in the exhibition A Prosperous Past: the Sumptuous Still Life in the Netherlands 1600-1700 - at the Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. It was described as follows by Dr Sam Segal in his accompanying catalogue (The Hague 1988), under no. 3 on p. 57.

"Only a few works by Jeremias van Winghen are known. A beautiful still life, the date of which has been erroneously read as 1667, is in fact dated 1607. It belongs to the collection of the Rijksdienst Beeidende Kunst in The Hague, where until recently it was attributed to Jacob van Walscappelle. This is impossible in view of the date and the signature which reads IvW.1607. It is a splendid piece [...] , in fact a pronk [sumptuous] still life that prefigures elements of later works by Osias Beert, Georg Flegel and Peter Benoit. [...] Outstandingly beautiful is the depiction of the German bekerschroef [glass-holder] with swans and cherubs on its base and with clamps in the form of chameleons which hold the foot of the roemer, or glass. [...] The bekerschroef was an important object at festive parties, as it was handed around to confirm ties of friendship."

Here we will restrict ourselves to the two silver objects in the picture: the tazza and the glass-holder.

The painter Jeremias van Winghen was born in 1578 in Brussels, where his father, Joos van Winghen, was a professional painter. The father moved from his native city to Frankfurt am Main in 1585, became a citizen in 1588 and died there in 1603.[1] We could speculate that the son inherited the tazza from his father.

It can best be compared with an Antwerp specimen of 1582-1583, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (fig. 2). In the painting the tazza is placed rather unobtrusively in the background, next to the richly decorated glass-holder in the left foreground. The pair may be viewed as a now fairly rare "double portrait in silver," of the kind that sometimes appears in works by Pieter Claesz., Clara Peeters and Pieter van Roestraten.

Glass-holders, although now a rarity in silver, are often seen in early seventeenth-century still lifes. In their day they must have been a fairly regular item on the tables of prosperous households, as evidenced by the inventory of an Amsterdam widow on the occasion of her second marriage in 1613. Among other precious objects she owned "twee vergulde schroeven wegende t'saemen tsestich loot ende een halff" (two gilt glass-holders weighing thirty ounces between them).[2]

As far as we know, no glass-holder has come down to us, either in silver or in a painting, in the extremely elaborate and sumptuous form shown here. Its abundance and diversity of detail set it apart from most specimens of this kind of drinking vessel. It therefore seems unlikely that in 1607 this costly cup belonged to Joos van Winghen, who did not marry a rich heiress till 1616.

1. Jeremias van Winghen, Still life with silver-gilt glass-holder and tazza. Copper, 45.5 x 39 cm. Monogrammed and dated "I v W. 1607". The Hague, Rijksdienst Beeidende Kunst, inv. no. NK 1493

We will attempt to attribute this unusual piece to a specific silversmith. As the pictorial rendering of the object clearly shows the outstanding quality of its design and craftsmanship, we regard Joos van Winghen's model as an individually-made masterpiece. It does not look at all like the run-of-the-mill product of an ordinary workshop.

It may well have been made by Christoph Jamnitzer (1563-1618), member of a famous family of Nuremberg artists in silver. In 1985 they were the subject of a comprehensive exhibition in their native city.[3] Our attribution is based primarily on a comparison with the following equally superb examples of his preserved works: The Trionfi Ewer in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and The Dragon Ewer in the Grüne Gewölbe, Dresden (fig. 3).