A circular silver tazza-dish embossed with a hunting scene

A circular silver tazza-dish embossed with a hunting scene

A circular silver tazza-dish embossed with a hunting scene surrounded by a band of overlapping leaves encircled by a parade of animals, comprising various birds, horses, snails, goats, squirrels, rabbits, dogs and butterflies amongst renaissance ornaments.

Central to the scene are two fishermen at a riverbank. On the right between two trees a hunter releases his falcon. A frog and a duck are seated between waterplants on the foreground. A watermill below a tree is depicted on the left with a water-bird in front. On the middle plane a rowingboat with a hunter and his dog is depicted.

The hunting scene is complex. The silversmith used the central part of an unknown print as an example. The Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich owns a similar plaquette that has the same central scene but is surrounded by a band of gods. This plaquette is monogrammed and dated ‘HG 1572’.

The Munich plaquette depicts an allegory of fishing an hunting below the god Jupiter. The imagery of the children of the planets is part of the world-view of the Antiquities which became popular again in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This view is based on the idea that everything on earth – animals, plants and the elements as well as the mental and physical conditions of human beings- are interconnected and governed by stars and planets, which in their turn are influenced by even higher powers