919 - "Judith and Holofernes" Salver of the Barons of Alvito Electrotype.

"Judith and Holofernes" Salver of the Barons of Alvito Electrotype. Electroformed and silver-plated copper. C. W. Fleischmann, Munich, 1875–1900. Copy of a Portuguese silver-gilt salver c.1510–1520, preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 904). 5x50 cm 2,629 g This magnificent basin is a historic copy of an early 16th-century Portuguese basin in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is characteristic of the highly ornamented Portuguese silver that became so popular among collectors and art educators during the second half of the 19th century. No space is left undecorated, but the lively design is kept controlled in distinct horizontal bands that give the scenes a sense of movement as the basin turns full circle. The outer rim is divided into eight scenes that depict the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes. The composition is crammed with figures showing the city of Bethulia under siege and culminates at the top with Holofernes passing out drunk followed by a view of the cover of his tent being pulled back as Judith holds his severed head. The inner rim or bouge is divided into twelve scenes of courtly life divided by twisted columns terminating in masks. The inner convex band shows armoured soldiers marching to war between two large castles. In the centre of the basin is the coat of arms of the Lobos da Silveira, Barons of Alvito, with its five wolves in a shield surrounded by a border of diagonal crosses. Turning the basin over is very revealing. Firstly, the thin, granular surface with encrustations of copper at the outward facing edges shows this basin is an electrotype. It was formed by depositing pure copper from solution into a mould taken from the original basin in Vienna. As the mould was a single open-faced mould, the back of the electrotype bears no relation to the back of the original as it is merely the negative of the deposit from the front. Comparing the fronts of the original and the electrotype it appears that the first moulds were made by copying each of the circular sections separately. Separate copper deposits would have been created in these moulds to create ‘type patterns’ from which future moulds could be made for creating multiple copies. The type patterns were like photographic negatives to which one could turn for new moulds as the original was too fragile for repeated moulding. On this electrotype, the type patterns have been placed in a slightly different orientation from the original before a mould was made, as on the original, Holofernes’s tent is to the left of the coat of arms rather than above it. The back also has an old label fixed to it that while difficult to read appears to give an inventory number of 2056 and at the bottom reveals the manufacturer, or at least the retailer, as ‘C.W. Fleischmann, München’. The C.W. Fleischmann company had factories in both Nuremberg and Munich selling primarily ceramic copies of Renaissance and Baroque tankards and flagons, but their catalogues also included accurate copies of medieval bronze aquamaniles and electrotypes of Renaissance silver. It is unlikely that Fleischmann had direct access to the original silver-gilt basin in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The first electrotypes of it were produced by the Viennese metalworker, Carl Haas in the mid-1860s. Curator André Afonso showed two other electrotypes of the basin at an exhibition in 2021-22, ‘Tão úteis como os originais’ held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, one by Haas and the other unidentified. Interestingly, they both have Holofernes’s tent at the top of the composition, like the Fleischmann basin now offered for sale at MATER Fine Art. It is quite possible that C.W. Fleischmann acquired a Haas electrotype and made their own moulds from it to retail under their own name. The process of electrotyping was so accurate that copies could be made from copies with no loss of quality. Until recently, electrotypes were frequently dismissed as mere reproductions but now they are understood to be interesting objects in their own right, of deep historical significance with their own biographies that are quite separate from the originals. Electrotypes were a by-product of the invention of electroplating which revolutionised the trade of coating base metal objects with silver. Patented by Elkington and Company, of Birmingham England in the 1840s, the technique was the fulfilment of a century of research into the effects of electricity on metals and the first commercial application of electricity to the production of luxury household goods. Electrolytic deposition transferred metals from solution to solid state at a molecular level for the first time making the copies far more accurate than casting. Electrotypes represent a combination