Arched PLATE in polychrome painted enamel with... Lot 41

Arched PLATE in polychrome painted enamel with gold highlights representing the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew flayed alive; invisible counter-enamel. The saint is tied up flat on a table and turns his head towards the executioner who is cutting the skin off his right arm while another is cutting off his thigh; five other executioners take part in the torture, including a Jew sitting in the foreground sharpening the knives of the skinners; starry sky and foreground showing a meadow. Moulded and gilded wooden frame. Limoges, surrounded by the Pseudo-Monvaerni, circa 1500 Sight: Height: 15,5 cm - Width: 10,5 cm. (small restoration on the upper part). This enamel is particularly remarkable for several reasons. Its subject seems indeed unpublished in the production of the painted enamels of Limoges. The engraved source of the composition is also unusual. The Limougeaud painter was inspired by a print by Wenzel von Olmütz, whose activity in Moravia between 1481 and 1497 (fig.a). This engraver copied this scene from a panel of the altarpiece illustrating the martyrdoms of the apostles that the German painter Stefan Lochner made in 1435 for the Church of St. Lawrence in Cologne, now kept in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (inv.821-832, fig.b). It is thus interesting to note the circulation of prints at the end of the Middle Ages between European cities, some of which were very far apart. The enameller remained fairly faithful to engraving, respecting the brutality of attitudes and certain fasciés as well as the extravagance of the head coverings that Von Olmütz had reinterpreted in his own way. He added, however, a seventh executioner on the extreme left, whose legs he omitted to show. This awkwardness, or rather this lack of concern in plausibility, is one of the characteristics observed during the first period of production in Limoges. Other similarities can be established with works from the 1500s, notably those gathered around an artist w