This striking exercise in intarsia is an outstanding example of a group of Augsburg cabinets decorated extensively with fantastical landscapes and creatures, architectural capricci, exaggerated geometric scroll- and strapwork, moresques, and occasionally supplemented by human figures in the form of personifications and allegories. These cabinets, or Schreibtische, marked the rise of the Augsburg cabinet-making tradition and quickly became highly-coveted luxury objects throughout Europe. With their dazzling and colorful marquetry covering every inch of available surface, these cabinets stood out in interiors decorated with plain furnishings. In addition to being highly decorative, Schreibtische also indicated their owners’ familiarity with the new ideas of humanism and the Renaissance. Just like the cabinet offered here, these cabinets had a large number of drawers and compartments, many of them often secret ones, and were considered so complex and essential for the trade that in 1575 a Schreibtisch was made one of the compulsory masterpieces of the furniture-makers’ guild, in addition to a traditional wardrobe,' see R. Baarsen, 17th-Century Cabinets, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 6.
Although none of the surviving cabinets of exceptional quality are signed, as most south German craftsmen did not sign their works, it is now believed that most of them were made in the workshops of two of the most important masters working in Augsburg at the time: Bartholomeus Weishaupt and Lienhart Stromair. Recent research suggests that it is more likely that the maker of the most sumptuous Schreibtische was Weishaupt and those employed in his workshop, see G. Laue, ed., Der Madrider Kabinettschrank, Munich, 2019, pp. 32-35, where Laue convincingly outlines a number of important commissions of Augsburg intarsia work to the court of Philip II of Spain. Whereas most Augsburg cabinets of this type decorated with human figures depict them as parts of allegorical, biblical, or historic scenes, such as the table top sold Christie’s, London, 5 July, 2012, lot 7 (£265,250), the cabinet offered here is inlaid with elegant ladies playing various instruments including the harp, the trumpet, and the bass violin. It is unclear how these musicians fit into the decorative program of this cabinet. Knowing how complex, even enigmatic, the secondary meaning of the marquetry decoration of Augsburg Schreibtische could be, it is most likely that the ladies depicted here are allegories of the art of music, virtues or sciences.
DESIGN SOURCES
The inspiration for the trompe l’oeil architectural vistas derives from Italian Renaissance discoveries of Euclidean perspective shown in intarsia in Italian churches and princely studioli. Architectural engravings from the designs of Hans Vredeman de Vries, Hieronymus Cock’s Praecipua aliquot Romanae Antiquitatis Ruinarum Monimenta (1551), and in particular, Lorenz Stöer’s Geometria et perspectiva, published in Augsburg in 1567, illustrated perspective views of ruins. Stöer’s designs were evidently intended for intarsia workers; the title page of the Geometria et perspectiva stating, ‘containing various ruined buildings, useful to intarsia workers, as well as for the special pleasure of many other amateurs, ordered and arranged by Lorenz Stöer painter and citizen in Augsburg’ (ibid., p. 240). For German intarsia workers another important ornamental source for the Roman vocabulary of triumphal arches, columns, and obelisks was a series of etchings by Virgil Solis entitled Buchlin von den alten Gebewen, published in c. 1555. Solis’ images were copies of engravings by the French architect and designer, Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau, after drawings by Leonard Thiry (ibid., p. 248). These ruins may have had a significance as vanitas symbols, but seem mainly to have been favoured for the display of virtuosity.
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