Towards the end of the 16th century, two German cities were the undisputed centres of the goldsmiths' craft in the Empire. One of these was Nuremberg, which was still able to maintain its former primacy. The other was Augsburg, which had gained in importance since mid-century, becoming a rival to equal and eventually surpass Nuremberg, and which was to remain the most important goldsmithing city in Central Europe until well into the 18th century. At first, the economic structures of the two cities were comparable, with the major merchant guilds involved in the mining and metal trade forming the financial basis for continuing prosperity. [1] It was, however, the increasingly frequent sojourns of the German emperors in Augsburg during the course of the 16th century that created a new political and cultural climate. Moreover, the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 led to greater religious tolerance, encouraging personal encounters between potential clients and master goldsmiths on the fringes of the established official structures. In Nuremberg on the other hand, the stringency with which the Reformation had been implemented since 1525 may well have thwarted many a commission, even those that did not focus on Catholic church plate. [2]

Augsburg's rise as a centre of the goldsmiths' craft is clearly reflected in the city's growing numbers of independent master craftsmen. In 1529 there were just 56 of them, but by 1594, as the century drew to a close, there were no fewer than 200 - almost four times as many. The proportion of craftsmen in relation to the overall population was high (in 1615 the town had 185 goldsmiths, but only 137 bakers), and they were largely dependent on the export trade. [3] This made it imperative for the silver trade to be acknowledged as an independent branch so that the goldsmiths were not tied up in time-consuming external negotiations or dogged by financial problems. When Arnold Schanternell applied in 1582 for permission to run a third "open shop" alongside the silver traders Bartholme Fesenmair and Matthäus Holzapfel, he stressed the obvious advantages this would have for the master craftsmen based in the Imperial Free City, maintaining that he himself had a turnover of goods to the value of "several thousand guilders" through commissions from the goldsmiths. [4] The application was turned down, but Schanternell went on to set up a longstanding business in Prague which passed on after his death in 1588 to his son Christoph (died 1622), a fact that undoubtedly helped to consolidate relations between the Augsburg goldsmiths and the Prague court. The work of the jewellers and art dealers prepared the ground for Augsburg's meteoric rise to supersede Nuremberg as the centre of German goldsmithing. Silver traders visited the major trade fairs in Leipzig and Frankfurt and won commissions for the Augsburg masters. Their intimate local knowledge put them in a position to call upon the appropriate craftsmen and supervise collaboration between representatives of various crafts and trades in the creation of a work - a task to which the Augsburg patrician Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647) dedicated his efforts with remarkable skill. [5] Nuremberg had no such figure of comparable diplomatic skill and organisational talent.

Relations between the House of Habsburg and the Franconian artist goldsmiths continued through to the early 17th century. Although Rudolf II had his own court workshop in Prague at the time, he also purchased items of the highest quality in Nuremberg, including the Trionfi ewer and basin by Christoph Jamnitzer [6] and granted the title of imperial court goldsmith to Hans Petzolt (1551-1633), who supplied a number of cups to Prague. [7]

The Emperor was not alone in devoting himself to the late 16th century fashion for collecting. Many other German princes of the day also set about filling their treasuries, [8] among them the Bavarian dukes from Albrecht V (1550-1579) to Wilhelm V (1579-1597) and Maximilian I (1597-1651, Elector after 1623) who were keen connoisseurs of contemporary art and maintained close personal relations with the Augsburg craftsmen. The brilliant gold and enamel altars of the Munich Residenz, [9] for example, were probably produced in the workshops of Abraham Lotter and Ulrich Eberle. At the request of the client, however, these works were to remain secret and were shown only to a select circle of visitors in Munich and other palaces. [10] Quite apart from the exclusive and expensive materials involved, such secrecy - a new approach at the time - meant that the imperial court had little lasting influence or stylistic impact on the prolific output of secular silverware that was produced and purchased in the last third of the 16th century and the early 17th century. Today, our impression of the overall situation tends to be somewhat distorted by the fact that many items of use have been lost, whereas the precious masterpieces in the Kunstkammer tended to be protected by written agreements or documents. Tableware, including vast quantities of drinking vessels in every conceivable style, sumptuous centrepieces and table-fountains, and above all chargers and platters tended to be subject to more wear and tear. They were also more readily abandoned to the dictates of changing taste and melted down or turned into ready money in times of need and war.

A major stylistic change set in after the turn of the century when the sharply detailed ornament of Late Mannerism began to lose its teeming density and become more fluid, with the individual components of a vessel merging to create a single vibrant entity, heralding the advent of Early Baroque.

Orders for secular items in precious metal came from the urban aristocracy and the landed gentry who often turned to local master craftsmen for their acquisitions. In the cities, social and professional associations such as shooting clubs or guilds tended to possess a treasury, large or small, of predominantly silver ceremonial vessels and drinking cups. The city governments themselves had a considerable demand for all manner of silverware, partly because of their need to impress at official functions with the council silver, and partly because of their obligation to present prestigious ceremonial gifts on numerous occasions. Drinking vessels were particularly popular gifts, from the simple beaker in acknowledgement of services rendered to the magnificent chalice or even a sumptuously decorated ewer and basin presented to a Prince on his first entry into the city. [11] Whereas Nuremberg would appear to have had a constantly available store of such gifts, [12] Augsburg purchased them as and when they were required, at times taking into account the wishes of the recipient. Above all, the churches of both confessions had an insatiable demand for silver altar-plate and ornament. They were the most loyal clients of the Augsburg goldsmiths.

The first two decades of the 17th century saw little change in the daily life of Augsburg's citizens, in spite of the nascent fears of war and mounting religious tension. [13] At least a year before the Thirty Years' War broke out, the Augsburg diplomat, art lover and dealer Philipp Hainhofer presented a unique and widely admired work of art to Duke Philipp II of Pomerania and Stettin on 30 August 1617. Made under Hainhofer's instruction and supervision, the Pommerscher Kunstschrank or Pomeranian Cabinet [14] had taken twenty-seven craftsmen almost five years to complete. Built by Ulrich Baumgartner to a design by Hans Rottenhammer and Matthias Kager, it was destroyed in the last war. However, its contents have survived and are now housed in the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. They include tools, instruments and appliances of all kinds "stowed and hidden" in numerous drawers, niches and secret compartments, intended to represent an "encyclopaedia of the physical and moral world". [15] The many and varied dishes permit constantly changing and whimsically ornamental arrangements. Heart-shaped bowls and plates can be combined with round dishes, small beakers, candelabra, water jugs, oil and vinegar cruets, boxes, a credenza and a basin. Most of the silver objects were created by Michael Gass, but David Altenstetter, Matthäus Wallbaum and Nikolaus Kolb also contributed. On the whole, the most striking aspect of the dishes is their clarity and stringency of form, uncluttered by decorative elements. The only ornamentation is a delicate band of gold around the rim and an engraving of the owner's coat of arms.

The unadorned simplicity of the dishes in the Pommerscher Kunstschrank is by no means an exception in the goldsmithing work of early 17th century Augsburg. The Munich court also possessed a considerable quantity of silver plates bearing no ornamentation apart from the engraved coat of arms of the Duke, later the Elector Maximilian I on their smooth rim. [16] Only a few items have survived, having been salvaged centuries later from the River Inn near Mühldorf, where the supply vessel, or so-called Kuchen-Schiff, part of the convoy accompanying the Elector as he fled to Braunau after the victory of Franco-Swedish troops at Zusmarshausen, had sunk.

A similar apparent sobriety of design concentrating entirely on elegance and harmony of form can be found in a Protestant altar service produced in Augsburg around the same time. In 1620 and 1626, Johannes Lencker (died 1637) created a related set of communion flagons whose pear-shaped, smoothly polished and massive body was decorated by a single soldered-on cast relief medallion depicting a scene from the New Testament. [17] This version of the communion flagon became as much a signature Augsburg design in the 17th century as the prototype paten by Christoph Epfenhauser had been in the 16th century. In the second half of the century, however, such flagons began to bear increasingly exuberant Baroque decorative elements. Whereas the pear-shaped form of the wine flagon was adopted in Southern Germany (the Stiftskirche in Stuttgart, for instance, has two very similar communion flagons by Johannes Lencker, dated 1633) [18] the form of the secular pitcher tended to be more widespread in Northern and Central Germany. The barrel-shaped or slightly conical lidded flagons with a spout mounted high on the flagon and ending flush with the upper rim are sometimes identifiable as church plate only by dint of their actual usage. [19] Though not entirely unusual in the first third of the century, it is nevertheless remarkable that Johannes Lencker should have created not only Protestant church plate and major secular works such as the basin of a ewer and basin set bearing a relief depicting Europa and the Bull (private collection) [20] but also highly distinctive church plate for Catholic liturgical rites, such as the golden crucifix he created in 1610 for the Munich Residenz [21] or the three altar candelabra presented by the Bishop of Wroclaw and Plock to the church of St Jakob in Nysa. [22]

Though a goldsmith's religious faith was not a factor that influenced his order books following the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and even in the early years of the 17th century, it would nevertheless appear to have been quite unusual for a Catholic goldsmith to produce works for a Protestant church. This may have been because the Imperial Free City was overwhelmingly Lutheran, a fact also reflected in the ratio of Protestant to Catholic goldsmiths. The Bavarian Duke Maximilian I, one of the leading representatives of German Catholics, certainly had no compunctions about calling upon the services of the Protestant goldsmith Johannes Lencker in the early 17th century to work on the reliquary collection of the Munich Residenz, or in commissioning works by Jakob Anthoni for the Reiche Kapelle. [23]

It nevertheless comes as something of a surprise to find that the works created by Hans Jacob Bair, a Protestant, were almost entirely for the Catholic church. After his work for Augsburg cathedral [24] and for Konrad von Gemmingen, the Bishop-Prince of Eichstatt (1595-1612), [25] Max Fugger recommended him to his brother Jacob Fugger of Constance (1604-1626) for the 1613 reliquary of St Conrad in the Minster of Constance as "in dergleichen arbait alhie berühmt und zwar der beste" (in such work widely famed and indeed the best). [26] His statue of St Pelagius followed in 1614. [27] His reputation as the "foremost master in the field of goldsmith sculpture" [28] is consolidated by his silver figures in Dusseldorf [29] and St Gallen, both of which were created in 1623, i. e. in the third decade of the century. He was unable to complete what was probably his most important commission. In 1629 his son, who bore the same name, petitioned the masters of the guild to grant him the status of an independent master craftsman sooner than envisaged so that he could complete his father's work for King Sigismund III of Poland, "including a silver altar with life-size images". [30] Permission was granted in March 1629 and, at the request of the dealer and jeweller Hans Georg Beuerle, was extended in October, allowing Bair to employ one further journeyman exclusively for work on the altar. [31] Lorenz Seelig has persuasively demonstrated that the figures of two angels on the high altar of the Chapel of Our Lady at Czestochowa are surviving fragments of this probably unfinished work. [32] Like the sale of high quality cabinets with precious contents by Philipp Hainhofer, [33] these rare and highly impressive examples of work documented as commissioned during the 1620s, indicate that the Danish war, which raged mainly in Lower Saxony, had little effect on life in the south. For a while, at least, silver production and trading continued apace in Augsburg. There is not even any record of the upheavals of war having caused any serious impediments to consignments of raw materials or finished products. Though the Imperial Free City suffered currency devaluation, inflation, food shortages and plague epidemics, it was not until the Edict of Restitution of 4 March 1629 that it was threatened by profound and unsettling change.

The re-Catholicisation decreed by the Emperor resulted in the dismissal of Protestant officials, a lot that also affected the goldsmith Johannes Lencker in 1631, who had been a member of the council as burgomaster. The turning point came on 20 April 1632 when the city capitulated to Swedish troops. On 22 April King Gustavus Adolphus reinstated all the Protestant members of the council. On 24 April, following the official homage on the Weinmarkt, the city fathers presented the Swedish king with a magnificent and precious ceremonial gift of a sumptuous ebony cabinet [34] inlaid with rich hardstone intarsia and crowned by an extraordinary coconut cup in the form of a ship, created by Johannes Lencker. [35] The drawers of the cabinet contained a wealth of various mathematical instruments and silverware, including a nautilus shell cup mounted in silver and an oval silver basin by Hans Maulbronner. [36] Hainhofer had had the cabinet made by a group of Augsburg craftsmen in the period between 1625/26 and 1631, without being able to attract any seriously interested buyer for it, though it was hailed by many contemporaries as the eighth wonder of the world. [37] The city is said to have paid 6000 taler for it. [38]

After the death of the Swedish king and the crushing defeat suffered by the Swedes at the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, the city's situation deteriorated dramatically. Swept by a terrible plague epidemic in 1633-34 and beseiged by Bavarian troops, Augsburg suffered serious privation until the Leonberger Treaty restituted the situation that had prevailed in 1629 and a compromise was negotiated between the Emperor and the Elector of Saxony in the Peace of Prague in 1635. With this, Southern Germany entered a decade of gradual recovery, culminating in the ceasefire of 1646 that marked the beginning of peace negotiations. [39]

It is hard to imagine that, even in such turbulent years of existential threat, works of art in gold and silver continued to be produced. Admittedly, the number of objects surviving from the period shortly before mid-century is not large.

In spite of the desolate situation and growing poverty there were always goldsmiths in Augsburg who continued to make luxury goods. Though the number of independent master craftsmen declined, this was offset by the repeated granting of master craftsmen's rights to journeymen who did not yet fulfil all the requirements. [40] In the years between 1630 and 1637 the city, deeply in debt as it was, nevertheless presented gifts of silverware to the value of approximately 3318 guilders. [41] Even assuming that it might not have been possible to fulfil all orders as requested in the extremely difficult period of 1634-1635, it is interesting to note that no official purchases of silver are actually recorded. Transactions between goldsmiths and private clients - who probably included officers of the occupying forces - are not documented in the Augsburg archives and few objects created in that period have survived. The most remarkable of these is a drinking vessel in the form of an equestrian statuette with which the goldsmith David Lang, who died in 1635, created a compelling portrait of King Gustavus Adolphus. [42] This is the earliest example of a series of similar equestrian statuettes, many of them originating in the workshop of David I Schwestermüller, [43] depicting not only Gustavus Adolphus but also Charles I of England [44] and probably Bernhard of Weimar. [45] According to Hans R. Weihrauch, [46] a series of bronze equestrian statues with portrait busts of various archdukes (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) served as the model for the silver equestrian statuettes. David Schwestermüller is not known to have been acquainted with the Innsbruck figures and indeed this is unlikely. The goldsmith did, however, possess a sample drawing by the Augsburg engraver Hans Friedrich Schorer of this standard figural type, interpreted as depicting the Swedish king [47], which closely resembles a statuette in Stockholm. [48] The earlier equestrian portrait by David Lang seems much more direct and is distinctly reminiscent of the Stockholm busts by Jörg Petels. [49] In particular, the softer yet more precise modelling of the face and the alert expression betray the same intention. It is tempting to ask whether the sculptor provided the goldsmith with the model for his work or whether the goldsmith was inspired by his own impression of the king's personality.

The rapid normalisation of urban life following the Peace of Prague in 1635 is also documented, albeit indirectly, in the order books and business records of the goldsmiths. Journeymen from elsewhere were granted the rights of master craftsmen, either because the craft would otherwise have suffered a great decline in standards - "ohne dass in grossen Abfall" [50] - or because there were too few goldsmiths. [51] Special dispensations were issued for the additional employment of journeymen so that Augsburg's master craftsmen did not lose their commissions. In 1637 Christoph Fesenmair was working on a sophisticated hanging lamp for Vienna. In 1640 he received orders from Osnabrück for a chest, pontificalia and a madonna. [52] Two golden chalices were created for the Emperor in the workshop of Hieronymus Siebenburger in 1637 and 1638. [53] In the 1640s and 1650s Gregor Lieder supplied many of the leading Bavarian bishoprics and abbeys. [54] These documented applications for special dispensations in cases of major external commissions strongly indicate that the reputation the Augsburg goldsmiths had enjoyed before the Edict of Restitution still carried some weight and that former business relations had been retained or revived. In comparison to other professions, the goldsmiths had survived these difficult times relatively unscathed. Nevertheless a surprising change seems to have taken place. Whereas in the early 1630s Catholic church plate was frequently supplied by Protestant masters, now Catholic jewellers began to gain influence and importance until, towards the end of the century, the confession of client and goldsmith tended to tally.

Towards the end of the war, the goldsmiths found themselves facing new tasks. Not only cups, ewers and basins and tableware were in demand. Above all objects that served as status symbols were now created in the famous Augsburg workshops. The impressions gained by Swedish officers and ambassadors during their occupation of the Imperial Free City may go some way towards explaining the astonishingly early orders for silver objects [55] from the Swedish aristocracy, including two surviving chandeliers [56] and, most notably, the silver throne commissioned from Abraham Drentwett by Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie for the coronation of Christine, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. [57]

The fate of Augsburg and its goldsmiths in the first half of the 17th century does not bear comparison with developments in other cities, for the events of war were often local and far too diverse in their effects. In Hamburg, for instance, King Christian II of Denmark soon became a loyal admirer of the local master craftsmen and although Nuremberg was neither beseiged nor occupied, its goldsmithing lost its supra-regional significance. In Augsburg, a number of factors contributed to the continued flourishing of the goldsmiths' craft. On the one hand they had the intelligent and systematic support of the city council, which did not pander to individual interests, while the smoothly functioning trading network of jewellers on the other hand ensured that the goldsmiths were not burdened by tasks unrelated to their craft. What is more, each goldsmith underwent a rigorous course of training involving a long period as a travelling journeyman, conducive to open-minded attitudes, while the longstanding tradition of the craft may well have fostered a sense of security.

FOOTNOTES