Christoph Jamnitzer
Nuremburg 1563 – 1618 NuremburgDance of the Months
Peter Dryer has confirmed the attribution of this drawing to the Nuremburg goldsmith Christoph Jamnitzer. He points out that both the landscape and the animals placed between the festoons recall his engraved ornamental work. Dr Achim Reither of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, agrees with the attribution.
The penmanship is close to four signed and documented drawings at the Victorian and Albert Museum, London. These are preparatory studies for one of his greatest masterpieces, ‘The Trionfi Ewer and Basin’, executed in 1601/02 for Emperor Rudolf II and now in the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. Two other drawings with similar putti on sea monsters are in Amsterdam and Budapest. (see Exhibition catalogue, ‘Der Mohrenkopfpokal von Christoph Jamnitzer’, Bayerisches National Museum, Munich, 2002, p.263, fig. 44)
Our drawing is of special interest as it is the third of three studies for the same commission. It links the other two and gives an insight into his preparation for his work as a goldsmith. The drawing’s elongated shape, the swags adorning the top of the sheet, and the fact that the left and the right sides are barely linked, indicate that it is a study for the decoration of a circular vessel, around which the design would have been wrapped.
The first in the series of studies is in the Osterreichises Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Vienna. This drawing is trimmed on both sides and possibly once continued on the right. In the foreground seven dancing men and women, in similar poses to our sheet, are arranged in a line. In the sea behind, a circle of tritions and mermaids dance around Neptune on a shell. In front of this circle putti ride on sea monsters as in our drawing. The second drawing from the Konig Fachsenfeld Collection is a sheet of studies of putti riding sea monsters. It is clearly related to both the other two.
Jamnitzer was a master of pictorial inventiveness. With his tendency to add on to his compositions, his strange scalloped ornamentation and an un-naturalistic, mannerist approach to creating figures, he showed himself to be one of the great artists of the international late mannerist movement. Around eighty of his drawings and twenty of the spectacular items he made as a goldsmith have been preserved.