18th Century Italian or German Silver Filigree Frame with a Devotional Inset.

5.5 x 7.6 cm (frame) and 1.8 x 2.4 (medallion).

Sold by Auctioneers Cambi 18th November 2015 - Lot 107.

https://www.cambiaste.com/uk/auction-0244/medaglione-devozionale-con-crocifissione-argen-140493

The Cambi di Aste website published a fairly in depth essay on the subject and is repeated here with a google translation and slightly edited by me.

 

This fine medallion with a silver filigree frame features a rich interweaving of plant motifs from which various inflorescences in relief with stamens and grains bloom and ends at the bottom with a large tulip with a strong symbolic value. The rich frame follows almost slavishly that of the devotional medallion in a private collection in Palermo, referred to by Maria Concetta Di Natale as Sicilian workers from the second half of the 17th century.

 

The work shows in the center two painted enamels depicting the Madonna della Lettera and San Domenico probably produced in Messina due to the type of enamels and the inclusion of the Virgin venerated in the city of the Strait (MC Di Natale, entry 1.28, in Ori e silverware of Sicily from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, exhibition catalog edited by MC Di Natale, Milan 1989, p. 97-99).

Stylistic affinities can also be found with the almost contemporary devotional medallion with the Holy Family from the Volpe Collection in Rome, also by Sicilian craftsmen (MC Di Natale - G. Volpe, file 1,27, in Ori e argenti. . ., 1989, pp. 97-98).

 

Among the innumerable filigree works created by the skilled Sicilian artists, the chalice of the Cathedral of Cefalù of 1703 should also be included (M. Accascina, I marchi delle argenterie e oreficerie siciliane, Busto Arsizio 1976, p. 105; C. Guastella, La suppellettile and movable furniture, in Materials for historical knowledge and the restoration of a cathedral. Exhibition of documents and figurative testimonies of the Ruggerian basilica of Cefalù, Palermo 1982, p. 153) and another similar example from the Cathedral of Gerace, dated 1726 , commissioned by Bishop Diez De Aux, whose coat of arms is placed at the base of the artifact (MT Sorrenti, in Arte e fede a Gerace, 12-20 century: short guide to the exhibition, edited by M. Cagliostro-MT. Sorrenti, Rome 1996, pp. 12, 16).

 

The ornaments of the work in question also recall those of the chalice of the church of S. Chiara di Matera made in 1702, whose author, due to the presence of the hallmark in the filigree structure, has been identified by Claudia Guastella as the Palermo silversmith Gaetano Nicodemi , probably specialized in this process (C. Guastella, in Goldsmiths and clients in the Caltanissetta area, exhibition catalog edited by C. Guastella, in press. For the work, see also E. Catello, Un grande patrimony of silver antiquities, in Argenti in Basilicata, exhibition catalog edited by S. Abita, Salerno 1994, pp. 152-153).

A skilled silversmith from Messina, instead, he executed the filigree chalice of the church of Santa Maria La Nova in Scicli (RG), a work of 1706 (G. Musolino, file 148, in Il Tesoro dell'Isola. Sicilian masterpieces in silver and coral from the 15th to the 18th century, exhibition catalog edited by S. Rizzo, Catania 2008, pp. 922-923). Precisely this work is the one that comes closest to the artefact in terms of type of workmanship and decoration _ allowing us to hypothesize, even in the absence of trademarks, that the Rimini watermark comice was also created by an equally skilled artist of the Strait area.

In fact, the Scicli goblet proposes similar phytomorphic and floral motifs with beaded stamens and grains that demarcate and conclude the various parts of the work. With the interweaving of thin silver threads, the Sicilian silversmiths also created a whole series of small artifacts "in which the reduction to miniature is operated by imitating object typologies taken from cabinet-making (chairs, tables, beds, sedan chairs, chandeliers), from silverware, from the art of majolica or woven wicker (reliquaries, vases with branches, cake stands, trays, baskets)” and “from everyday life (warmers, braziers, carriages)” (S. Grasso, Le filigrane, in Wunderkammer siciliana to the origins of the lost museum, exhibition catalog edited by V. Abbate, Naples 2001, p. 263). This typology includes some filigree objects from the Regional Gallery of Sicily in Palazzo Abatellis, including a canopy bed, a riser, a brazier and many others made in Sicily between the end of the 17th and the mid-18th century (cf. S. Grasso, files II.98 - II.113, in Wunderkammer. . ., 2001, 2001, pp. 265-271 ) and also various contemporary filigree miniatures of Sicilian derivation also from the Rimini Collection, such as the vases with branches with the body in amber.

If the use of the watermark is documented in Messina by various punches affixed especially during the eighteenth century, its processing, as already mentioned, is also attested in Palermo between the end of the seventeenth century and the mid-eighteenth century both by the discovery of the chapters of the maestranza (S. Barraja, The maestranza degli orofi e argentieri di Palermo, in Ori e argenti..., 1989, p. 372; Idem, The brands of the silversmiths and goldsmiths of Palermo from the seventeenth century to today, Milan 1996, p . 49) and from the retrieval of archival documents and a few trademarks found (MC Di Natale, file no. 114, in Splendori di Sicilia. Decorative arts from the Renaissance to the Baroque, exhibition catalog edited by MC Di Natale, Milan 2001, p 434)

 Even Maria Accascina observed that this art "ancient glory of the Palermo laboratory" in the Norman and Swabian era was also flourishing in the Sicilian capital, but unlike Messina, the manufactured articles were not generally marked (M. Accascina, Goldsmith's shop of Sicily from the XII to the XIX century, Palermo 1974, p. 403).

The frame of the Maranghi Collection incorporates a medallion not pertinent to the rest of the work, according to the custom of collectors of the past who sometimes tended to update the works according to new fashions or redo parts that have been damaged over time. It could have been a cameo, of which the background on which the ivory micro-sculptures were placed has probably been lost, passed through the Messina antiques market and readapted inside the rock crystal case.

 

The technique used for the Crucifixion group, of refined workmanship, crowded with figures, which presents, among other things, the Madonna, Saint John the Evangelist, the Magdalene and a soldier on horseback, ascribes the artefact to the Nordic area, probably executed between the end of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the golden age of the Wunderkammern. This creation brings to mind the pendants with verre églomisé, still kept in Sicilian treasures, such as that of the Pepoli Museum in Trapani with Agnus Dei on one side and Crucifixion on the other, doubtfully ascribed to a Sicilian goldsmith of the first half of the 17th century. whose scenes are executed in relief perhaps in painted wax (MC Di Natale, The jewels of the Madonna of Trapani, in Ori e argenti..., 1989, p. 79).

Rock crystal, like coral, is attributed an apotropaic value against fascination (P. Castelli, The virtues of gems, their symbolic and astrological meaning in the humanistic culture and popular beliefs of the fifteenth century. The recovery of ancient gems, in L goldsmith's art in fifteenth-century Florence, exhibition catalog edited by MG Ciardi Drupè dal Poggetto, Florence 1977, pp. 309-363). 

Its processing on the island, already attested in the Arab and Norman tradition (M. Accascina, Oreficeria. 1974, p. 262), is documented in the 16th century, from what can be deduced from the 1573 inventory of the goldsmith Russitto, which lists “a piece of rustic crystal”, unworked, together with other works in rock crystal (G. Gardella, La “Heredita del quondam Pietrb'Rosfltto”l57î Inventdifin for the public sale of jewels and workshop utensils that belonged to a rich manufacturer of silverware in Palermo and names of the buyers, Palermo 2000).

In the first decades of the seventeenth century, however, the Lombard goldsmith Marzio Cazzola distinguished himself in Sicily for the working of rock crystal (see MC Di Natale, A Lombard goldsmith in Palermo: Marzio Cazzola, in Itinerari d'arte in Sicily, edited by G. Barbera and MC Di Natale, [Naples] 2012, pp. 106-110, which contains an extensive bibliography; Eadem, in L. Sarullo, Dictionary of Sicilian artists, vol. IV, Applied Arts, edited by MC. Di Natale, in press, ad vocem) and the silversmith Michele Ricca (MC. Di Natale, in L. Sarullo, Dizionario. . ., vol. IV, in press, ad vocem, with previous bibliography). Rosalia Margiotta