Pyx of the Knight Hans Fuchs
From AudreyWiki
| Artist: | Anonymous (German) |
| Created: | 1493 AD |
| Medium: | partially gilded silver |
| Dimensions: | 2 ½ x 2 ¼ in (6.3 x 5.8 cm) |
| Credit Line: | Acquired by Henry Walters, 1912 |
| Accession No.: | 57.655 |
| Description: | Small circular box carrying the name and coat of arms of the knigt Hans Fuchs and the date 1493. |
| Culture: | German |
| Period: | Late Medieval |
| Country: | Germany |
| Style: | Gothic |
Contents |
Description
The expensive material of which this little box is made suggests that it originally served as a container for the host (consecrated Communion bread).[1] Its shape must have been well known in fifteenth-century South-German metalwork, since an Albrecht Dürer drawing of ca. 1494 portrays the artist’s father, a Nuremberg goldsmith, next to a pair of hands holding a similar object.[2] Very few comparable pieces survive, however. One has on the inside of its lid an enamel image of the Holy Face.[3] Unusually, the Walters pyx carries not Christian symbols but the name and coat of arms of the person who commissioned it. His heraldic emblem, a fox, corresponds to the meaning of the German noun Fuchs. Hans Fuchs (1445-1504) was lord of several estates and sat in 1500 in the Imperial Diet that Emperor Maximilian I summoned at Augsburg.[4] This pyx was probably made for the chapel of his principal residence, Bimbach castle. It subsequently belonged to one of the foremost nineteenth-century British collectors of medieval art.[5]
References
- ↑ On such containers: J. Braun, Das christliche Altargerät in seinem Sein und seiner Entwicklung (Munich, 1932), 304-7; Eucharistic Vessels of the Middle Ages, exh. cat., Busch-Reisinger Museum (Cambridge MA, 1975), 65-85.
- ↑ W. L. Strauss, The Complete Drawing of Albrecht Dürer, 6 vols. (New York, 1974), I: 198-9, cat. 1494/2.
- ↑ H. Kohlhaussen, Nürnberger Goldschmiedekunst des Mittelalters und der Dürerzeit, 1240 bis 1540 (Berlin, 1968), 79, 88, 164-6.
- ↑ On him: A. Tittmann, “Die ritterschaftliche Familie der Fuchs. Ihre Genealogie und ihr Besizt im Altlandkreis Hassfurt”, Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 58 (1998), 37-95, esp. 74-5.
- ↑ On H. Magniac: H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), vol. 36: 128-9.
Provenance
Hollingworth Magniac (d. 1867), Colworth, Bedfordshire, by purchase; Magniac estate, by descent; [Christie’s, London, July 11, 1892, no. 796]; Charles Borradaile (d. 1928), London, 1892, by purchase; [George R. Harding, London]; Henry Walters (d. 1931), Baltimore, 1912, by purchase; Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1931, by bequest.
Bibliography
J. C. Robinson, Notice of the Principal Works of Art in the Collection of Hollingworth Magniac, Esq. of Colworth (London, 1862), 23: cat. 26.
