Holy Water Stoup Trapani, Sicily.

 

(Post in preparation)

An Eighteenth Century Gilded Copper Coral and Silver Filigree Holy Water Stoup, Trapani, Sicily.

42 x 38 cms.

Previously with Brun Fine Art Bond St, London.

https://london.brunfineart.com/

Images above from - 

https://london.brunfineart.com/content/feature/35/artworks-91-trapani-reliquary-holy-water-font-17th-18th-century/

I have posted previously on Sicilian Filigree see -

https://antiqueeuropeanfiligree.blogspot.com/2023/03/some-sicilian-silver-filigree-objects.html

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17th/18th Century Silver Filigree and Coral Holy Water Stoup.

With a carved coral figure of John the Baptist.

Museo Civico Filigrana Pietro Carlo Bosio. Campo Ligure.

Attributed to Franciscus Palumbo of Palermo, Sicily. (see below).

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18th Century Holy Water Stoup with a Coral figure of John the Baptist.

 Coral, Gilded Copper and Silver Filigree.

 The coral from Trapani, the silver perhaps manufactured in Palermo, Sicily

 31 x 21 cms.

 Attributed to Franciscus Palumbo of Palermo, Sicily. (see below).

 Sold by Cambi Auctions, Milan. - 18th November 2015.

 https://www.cambiaste.com/uk/auction-0245/acquasantiera-in-rame-dorato-filigrana-dargent-144586

The valuable artefact from the Maranghi collection in Rimini can be compared with a few other splendid examples of Sicilian-made stoups, including with the similar artefact which incorporates the depiction of San Rocco, formerly in a private collection and now kept in the Pietro Carlo Bosio Civic Filigree Museum of Campoligure (cf. MC Di Natale, file II.101, in Gold and silver of Sicily from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, exhibition catalog edited by MC Di Natale,Milan 1989, p. 254-255; see also ancient Tigullio.

Rediscovering the cult of Santa Rosalia. Art, history, traditions, Genoa 2002, p. 125) and with the other similar from a private collection in Palermo bearing on the reverse the inscription Franciscus Palumbo filius Gennari Palumbo fecit hoc opus 1678, which presents the representation of Santa Rosalia and the genius of the Oreto river (cf. MC Di Natale, entry 116 , in L'arte del corallo in Sicilia, catalog of the exhibition edited by C. Maltese - MC Di Natale, Palermo 1986, pp. 288-290, which reports the previous bibliography; MC Di Natale, file 1.25, in Sicilian Wunderkammer at the origins of the lost museum, exhibition catalog edited by V. Abbate, Naples 2001, pp. 116-117).

 

The compositional and stylistic affinities lead us to hypothesize that the precious surviving works, including the one here, have been made by the same workshop, probably active in Palermo in which a coral worker from Trapani must have collaborated, possibly sheltering in the city after the diaspora of 1672, following a revolt by the coral workers in Trapani and a silversmith from Palermo (MC Di Natale, Ars corallariorum et sculptorum coralli in Trapani, in Rosso corallo. Precious arts of Baroque Sicily, exhibition catalog edited by C. Amaldi di Balme - S. Castronovo, Milan 2008, pp. 27-28), even if the work of Campoligure and that of Rimini were built immediately after.