Page 129 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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Nuremberg craftsman Charles v of France had three, although one of COCONUT CUP
them was broken (Lightbown 1978, 59). Ostriches
OSTRICH EGG JUG from North Africa and the Near East had been c -1475-1500
brought to Europe in classical antiquity; Pliny the English
c. 1300-1350 Elder knew the animal well and provided a good coconut, silver partly gilt
ostrich egg and silver gilt height 20.2 (j /s)
7
height 33 (13) description of it. In the Middle Ages, however, references: Jackson 1911, 2:649; Wafts 1924, 28-29;
references: Rossacher 1962, 6-7, no. 6, fig. 8; the ostrich was known mainly through literary Oman 1979, 296, pi. 71; fritz 1983, 93-94, no. 27,
Rossacher 1966,126, no. 26; Kohlhaussen 1968, 154, sources, such as bestiaries, and most images fail to pi. m
f
no. 234, ig. 252; Meiss 1976, ig. 88; Lightbown capture the characteristics of the animal. It is only
f
1978, 59; Wagner 1985, 36, /ig. 4; Koreny 1988, in the drawings of Giovannino de' Grassi (d. 1398) The Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford
38-39, no. 5 and his workshop that we find a more accurate
rendering of the ostrich (Struthio camelus L.); Seven coconut cups are mentioned in a 1508
Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
the best known among Renaissance images is per- inventory of the plate owned by New College,
haps a Franconian drawing made c. 1500 and until Oxford. Two of these are still owned by the col-
This jug comes from the famous Silberkammer, recently attributed to Diirer (Koreny 1988, 38-39, lege today. The body of this cup, the earlier and
the treasury of the prince-archbishops of Salz- no. 5). In the Middle Ages and later the ostrich more unusual of the two, is fashioned out of a
burg; it is recorded in an inventory of 1612 as a egg was sometimes seen as a symbol of the coconut mounted in a silver oak tree. The base
small jug made of an ostrich egg mounted in silver Madonna's perpetual virginity. Such associations represents a patch of ground enclosed by a pali-
and gilt ("Ain Kandl von einem Straussenayr mit encouraged the mounting of ostrich eggs as reli- sade. From the "ground/' an area of plain white
Silber und verguldt eingefasst"). Ostrich eggs gious vessels. Eggs were also hung in churches as silver displate, rises the trunk of an oak tree
were still very rare objects in the fourteenth cen- a symbol of the Madonna; this is why Piero della encircled by a collar of intertwined Ds. From the
tury. Raoul de Nesle, marshal of France, had one Francesca painted an ostrich egg hanging over trunk, which is also the stem of the cup, spring a
such egg mounted in gold, as we know from an the Madonna in his celebrated altarpiece, now in dozen branches, six of which have been pruned
inventory compiled after his death in 1302, while the Brera, Milan (Meiss 1976, fig. 88). J.M.M. back, while the other six are covered in abundant

128 CIRCA 1492