{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O377012"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O377012/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GP4543/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2013GP4543/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2013GP4543","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2013GP4539","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2013GP4542","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2013GP4541","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2009CD7991","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2017JY2066","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O377012/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O377012","accessionNumber":"2125-1855","objectType":"Tazza","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"The maker's mark (monogram 'AV') on the outer rim of this silver vessel is almost certainly that of the Dutch silversmith Adam van Vianen (d. 1627). Adam spent his entire life in or around Utrecht, where he initially trained as an engraver. This shallow bowl on a footed stem, a type of vessel referred to by the Italian term 'tazza', is one of the earliest examples of Adam's work and it dates from 1612. Its form and decoration owe much to sixteenth-century styles of ornament inspired by the Classical Roman world. However, the flowing, flattened faces round the foot, and the curious motifs between the scrolling leaves that frame the central scene in the bowl, foreshadow the fluid forms that would make Adam famous. He and his brother, Paulus (who worked at various prestigious European courts) became famous for their fantastically-formed silver cups, vases and dishes (a style which modern scholars refer to as 'auricular').\r\nTazzas were originally made in glass, in sixteenth-century Venice, but goldsmiths soon copied the form in precious metal. Sixteenth and seventeenth-century paintings show glass and metalwork tazzas being used to drink wine at table, or to serve delicacies such as biscuits, candied fruits, or fruit. The detailed scenes which decorate the bowls of precious metal examples suggest that many were also objects to be displayed and admired.","physicalDescription":"Silver, raised, embossed and chased, the bowl of the tazza embossed with the Old Testament scene 'The Judgment of Solomon' (3 Kings 3, verses 16-28).","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Vianen, Adam van","id":"A8949"},"association":{"text":"maker","id":"x40240"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"silver","id":"AAT11029"}],"techniques":[{"text":"embossing","id":"AAT53826"},{"text":"raising","id":"AAT237068"},{"text":"chasing","id":"AAT54016"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"silver","categories":[{"text":"Metalwork","id":"THES48920"},{"text":"Enslavement","id":"THES396519"}],"styles":[{"text":"Proto-Baroque","id":"AAT112426"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"MET","id":"THES48599"},"images":["2013GP4543","2013GP4539","2013GP4542","2013GP4541","2009CD7991","2017JY2066"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"6","id":"THES49750"},"free":"","case":"CA2","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"tazza","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Utrecht","id":"x37441"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1612","earliest":"1612-01-01","latest":"1612-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Weight","value":"612.2","unit":"g","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"16.6","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Diameter","value":"20.4","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"diameter of bowl","note":""},{"dimension":"Diameter","value":"10","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"diameter of base","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[{"content":"Zig-zag assay mark on the outer rim of the bowl; zig-zag assay marks on the base of the foot, on the inner rim of the foot and on the outer rim of the foot.","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"Only the bowl has additional marks."},{"content":"Four marks on the outer rim of the bowl, two below and two overstriking the zig-zag assay mark. From left to right these are:\r\nMaker's mark 'AV' for Adam van Vianen; lower-case 't' in a rectangular punch, 1795 tax mark for Utrecht; the town mark of Utrecht, a shield in a circular punch (overstrikes the assay mark); the date-letter for 1612, an R in a shield-shaped punch (slightly overstrikes the assay mark).\r\nFor the maker's mark see: Houtzager (1970), no. 23.\r\nFor the town and date marks see Gans (1992), p. 144.\nFor the identification of the 1795 tax mark, the V&amp;A is grateful for the advice of J. R. Ter Molen.  See also Ter Molen (1994), p. 645.","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":""},{"content":"On the inside of the rim of the bowl: a crowned letter 'O' in a rectangular punch. This is a quality control mark for the town of Amsterdam, 1729. See Rosenberg (1911), no. 4734.","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":""}],"objectHistory":"The identity of the maker and the date of the piece have been interpreted in two different ways because the monogram 'AV' was used by both Adam and later by his son Christian van Vianen. The date-letter 'R' was also used on two occasions by the Utrecht authorities for the years 1612 and 1634. The German scholar and hallmark specialist Marc Rosenberg first identified the  'AV' monogram as the mark of the Utrecht silversmith Adam van Vianen (died ca. 1627) and the date-letter 'R' as that of the year 1612 (Rosenberg: 1911, no. 4822: he noted the other two marks, but stated they were illegible). In his revised and expanded edition of the work (1928, vol. III.iv, no. 7721), he rejected his earlier attribution of the tazza and identified the mark as that of Adam's son, Christiaen van Vianen (died 1667). His reattribution appears to be based on a reinterpretation of the date letter to the year 1634. The attribution to Christiaen is followed by E. Alfred Jones, who declared the tazza 'the only piece of silver which can be said to have been made by van Vianen in England', and dated it to 1635 (Jones (1935), p. 84). However, the Dutch silver expert J. R. Ter Molen recently compared images of these marks with ones on a piece marked for Utrecht in 1610. The similarity of the town marks and the form of the punch used for the date-letters confirm the date-letter on the tazza as 1612 (see correspondence in object folder, Metalwork Section). \n\nThe stylistic and iconographic features of the tazza itself also support a dating of 1612. The strapwork and fruit motifs on the stem of the tazza recall late sixteenth century designs (particularly those on a 1594 covered cup, also by Adam), and the figures, dressed in early-sixteenth-century costume, recall the work of the engraver Lucas van Leyden and, in particular, the work of the Utrecht painter Anthonie van Blocklandt (died Utrecht 1583; see: de Jonge (1937), pp. 102-3; Frederiks (1952), I, no. 49 ) pp. 78-9; ter Molen (1984), II, no. 407, p. 80); <u>De Utrechtse edelsmeden Van Vianen</u> (1984), no. 56 (p. 72). The foot of the bowl is almost certainly by Adam as well, and may have been made at a slightly earlier date (de Jonge (1937), p. 102).\r\nAdam van Vianen (born perhaps in Utrecht, 1569; died probably Utrecht, 1627) trained as an engraver but became known for his skill as a silversmith. Nothing is known of his work before 1612, and he remained in, or close to, Utrecht all his life (unlike his brother Paulus, also a silversmith, who was employed at various European courts).\r\nThe tazza was originally part of the collection amassed by the politician, statesman and collector Ralph Bernal (1783 - 1854), which had been housed at his home in Eaton Square, London. (For Bernal see Davies [2004]). At Bernal's death, the Society of Arts and John Charles Robinson, one of the curators of the South Kensington Museum (as the V&A was then known) attempted to persuade the British government to buy the whole collection for the Museum, but their campaign was unsuccessful. Bernal's collection was put to auction at Christie's in 1855. The Museum bid successfully for this tazza, paying the sum of £45 10s. The previous history and ownership of the tazza is unknown, although the 1795 Utrecht tax mark, stamped in between the earlier marks, proves the piece was still in a Utrecht collection in the late eighteenth century.\n\nAdam van Vianen and his brother Paulus developed an extraordinarily fluid style of silversmithing which modern British scholars have termed 'auricular', but which in the seventeenth-century Netherlands was known as 'whims and drolleries' ('fratsen en snaeckeryen'). It consists of fantastic, curving forms and figures that make a solid silver vessel appear in a liquid, flowing state. These forms evolved from the so-called 'grotesque' ornament discovered during excavations of the Emperor Nero's palace in 1480s Rome, and emerge in engravings of the late 1590s. The van Vianen brothers, particularly Adam, became renowned among contemporaries for translating this 'auricular' style into striking pieces of silverware.This tazza, however, is good example of Adam's early work and its form and decoration are very much in the tradition of mid-sixteenth-century motifs inspired by the Classical world (such as the acanthus leaf ornament on the underside of the bowl, the baluster forms of the stem or the leaf patterns round the base of the foot). His skill at working figures in extremely shallow relief is evident in the scene in the bowl, where the perspective effects of the architectural setting give the illusion that the figures in the foreground are raised in high relief. Some elements, such as the flowing, flattened faces round the foot, or the curious motifs between the scrolling leaves that frame the central scene in the bowl, foreshadow the fluid forms that would make Adam famous.\n\n<u>Provenance</u>\r\n\r\nRalph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour.\r\n\r\nIn 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal's estates who were classed by the British government as his 'property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting.\r\n\r\nWhen Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer. ","historicalContext":"This vessel is of a type that has come to be known by the Italian word 'tazza'. The form  -- a shallow bowl set on a central stem -- originated in sixteenth-century Venice and tazzas were originally made in Venetian glass. They served as wine glasses, because their wide, flat bowls brought the liquid into as much contact with the air as possible, and thereby allowed wine to breathe. They could also be used to serve small, sugary sweets, biscuits or fruit. Goldsmiths copied the form of the tazza, and by the end of the sixteenth century the bowls and stem were elaborately embossed and chased. (See Gruber (1980), pp. 70-72). The increasingly detailed decoration on these pieces made them less functional: highly-wrought examples would probably have been reserved for display rather than for use.","briefDescription":"Silver, Netherlands (Utrecht), 1612, Adam van Vianen","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Gans, L. B. <u>Goud- en Zilvermerken Van Voet</u>. Leiden and Antwerp: Martinus Nijhoff Uitgevers, 1992. ISBN 9068903632"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Houtzager, M. Elizabeth. <u>Merken der Utrechtse Edelsmeden 1598 - 1740</u>.Utrecht:  Centraal Museum, 1970."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Rosenberg, Marc. <U>Der Goldschmiede Merkzeichen</u>. Frankfurt am Main: Heinrich Keller, 1911."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Davies, Helen. <u>Bernal, Ralph (1783–1854)</u>. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007, \nhttp://web.archive.org/web/20221208144600/https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-2233;jsessionid=40E4CFC95BB5B560C9FC89D702A65EE3"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Jones, E. Alfred. <u>Christian van Vianen goldsmith, in England</u>. <u>In</u>: <u>Oud Holland</u>, 52.3 (1935), 84-86"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Rosenberg, Marc. <U>Der Goldschmiede Merkzeichen</u>. Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt a.-g., 1922-28, 4 vols, IV: Ausland und Byzans"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"de Jonge, C. H. <u>Adam van Vianen, Zilversmid te Utrecht</u>. <u>In</u>: <u>Oud Holland</u> 54 (1937), 100-114"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Frederiks, J. W. <u>Dutch Silver</u>, 4 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952, vol. I: <u>Embossed plaquettes, tazze and dishes from the Renaissance until the end of the eighteenth century</u>."},{"reference":{"text":"<i>Zeldzaam zilver uit de Gouden Eeuw : de Utrechtse edelsmeden Van Vianen</i>. Utrecht : Centraal Museum, 1984.","id":"AUTH356191"},"details":"58","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"ter Molen, J. R. <u>Van Vianen: een Utrechtse familie van zilversmeden met een internationale faam</u>. 2 vols. Rotterdam: Gemeentedrukkerij, 1984."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Timothy Schroder. \"Vianen, van.\" In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T089208pg3 (accessed August 23, 2010)."},{"reference":{"text":"Gruber, A.C. Silverware. New York: Rizzoli, 1982.","id":"AUTH409791"},"details":"","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Ter Molen, J. R. <u>Zilver</u>. Catalogue of the collection in the Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Rotterdam: Museum Boymans - van Beuningen, 1994. ISBN 9069181282."},{"reference":{"text":"Christie and Manson, <i>Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Works of Art, from the Byzantine Period to that of Louis Seize, of that Distinguished Collector, Ralph Bernal</i> (London, 1855)","id":"AUTH403540"},"details":"","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Slave Registers: Jamaica: St. Ann. (1) Indexed, 1832, T 71/49","id":"AUTH403536"},"details":"","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"Hannah Young, ''The perfection of his taste': Ralph Bernal, collecting and slave-ownership in 19th-century Britain', <i>Cultural and Social History</i>, 19:1 (2022), pp. 19-37","id":"AUTH403542"},"details":"","free":""}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[{"text":"King Solomon","id":"N3143"}],"associatedPerson":[{"text":"Bernal, Ralph","id":"C2927"}],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[{"text":"Judgment of Solomon","id":"V953"}],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":["3 Kings 3, verses 16-28"],"galleryLabels":[{"text":"Masterpiece of the Week.\r\nMany people find that they appreciate a work of art much better in isolation, and their satisfaction is increased when they can judge it on its own merits apart from other objects of the same kind. One important work of art is accordingly selected from a different Department of the Museum each week and withdrawn from its usual position to be exhibited in this recess with a notice describing it in rather more detail than is possible on the ordinary labels. A new Masterpiece is on view every Thursday morning.\r\nThe primary purpose of this silver dish was doubtless ornamental, although Dutch pictures not infrequently show dishes of similar form laden with fruit. At any rate the plaque embossed with the Judgment of Solomon shows very little wear after more than three hundred years.\r\nIts maker was a van Vianen, of Utrecht, a member of one of the most eminent of all families of goldsmiths, although very little is actually known about them. On its knop and foot are masks characteristic of the curious fish motifs evolved by the elder Adam van Vianen (d. 1627), which, through the instrumentality of his son Christian, became popular far beyond the borders of Holland. The dish is generally supposed to be the work of Adam himself and to bear the Utrecht date-letter for 1612. The late Dr. Marc Rosenberg came to the conclusion, however, that the date-letter belonged to the next sequence and stood for 1634, and that the piece was therefore the work of Christian, who inherited his father's mark. The general appearance of the piece perhaps favours the earlier date and the authorship of Adam, rather than that of his son, who spent a number of years in this country in the service of Charles I and afterwards Charles II.\r\nThe dish was one of the numerous purchases made for the Museum at the celebrated Bernal Sale in 1855, when it fetched £45 10s. Its previous history has not been traced.","date":{"text":"1986","earliest":"1986-01-01","latest":"1986-12-31"}}],"partNumbers":["2125-1855"],"accessionNumberNum":"2125","accessionNumberPrefix":"","accessionYear":1855,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":["2018LB9902","2019LU1979","2019LU0143"],"recordModificationDate":"2025-08-13","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-24","availableToBook":false}}