Tankard

Michael Beri

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Prints were a key source for Beri in fashioning this tankard. Its form was made popular through the printed designs of Bernhard Zan. Scrollwork cartouches frame three oval reliefs filled with animals: a unicorn before an urban structure, a grazing horse in a landscape, and a recumbent lioness or panther near a well and tower. These animal scenes follow prints from a Thierbuch (or book of animals), published by Jost Amman and Hans Bocksberger in Frankfurt in 1579, that was an especially common source for metal-workers. Literature Judit H. Kolba. Hungarian Silver: The Nicolas M. Salgo Collection. London, 1996, p. 46, no. 24. References A tankard with a similar handle was sold by Dr. Fischer Kunstauktionen in Heilbronn, sale no. 181, no. 4. Another tankard, decorated similarly with animals within oval reliefs, was sold by the same house, sale no. 18, no. 232. Elemér Kőszeghy. Magyarországi ötvösjegyek a középkortól 1867-ig / Merkzeichen der Goldschmiede Ungarns vom Mittelalter bis 1867. Budapest, 1936, no. 574 [maker’s mark]. Important English, Continental and American Silver and Gold. Christie’s, New York, May 17, 2011, no. 126. [Wolfram Koeppe 2015]

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art