A parcel-gilt silver dish, apparently unmarked, Netherlandish or German, first half of 17th century

Sotheby's, London, (Property of a Gentleman) 29 November 2005, lot 187

Star-shape dishes were a feature of the Low Countries including the United Provinces and Spanish Netherlands. Examples from Amsterdam, Utrecht, Middleburg and Antwerp have been recorded. They may not have been alms dishes as has been suggested (few of them having any religious ornament), but they do appear to have been used to demonstrate the virtuosity of the engraver's art.

They were greatly prized at the time as evidenced by their appearance in still life paintings such as Allegory of Vanity, by Cornelis de Vos, in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (inv. no. GG 109) or The Card Game by the same artist in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (NM 689, see illustration).

The scenes engraved in the ovals are in biblical order moving clockwise from the top as follows:

Genesis XIV: Abraham & Melchizedek exchanging wine, bread and tithes

Genesis XVIII: Abraham entertains the Angels with Sarah

Genesis XXI: Hagar and Ishmael with the Angel of God

Genesis XXII: The Binding of Isaac

Genesis XXIV: Rebecca at the Well with Abraham's servant

Genesis XXV: The Burial of Abraham

Genesis XXV: Esau selling his birthright to Jacob

Genesis XXVII: Jacob receiving Isaac's blessing

The engraved scenes are taken from biblical illustrations of the Old Testament by the Swiss-born engraver Matthäus Merian I, who spent much of his life in Frankfurt where the images were first published as Icones Biblicae, sometime before 1630. Merian was a devout Calvinist, and it is most probable that the dish was made for another Protestant. The Netherlandish form and pronounced lobate ornament of the dish, with its German text and Protestant association, suggests as a place of manufacture a German town with an immigrant population from the Netherlands. Emden in East Friesland, for example was a centre of Calvinism, which benefitted in the 16th and 17th century from Netherlandish immigrants, persecuted for their religion. Hamburg was another town where Dutch engravers and silversmiths lived in the Holländische Reihe and where Dutch silver forms often appear.

One of a set of six embossed 8-pointed dishes by Harmen Lüders hallmarked Hamburg 1658 in the Kremlin Armory is illustrated by Erich Schliemann et.al., Die Goldschmiede Hamburgs, Hamburg, 1985, vol. III, no.81.

The engraved scenes at the centre of the dish and around the sides appear to be used in the order in which they were published, with the exception of Lot and his Daughters which has been omitted. The central scene of Jabob's dream is the latest chronologically of the series. This scene, along with the border of Hagar being shown the Well, is used on Delft tiles in the 18th century Hunting lodge of Amalienburg, built for the then Prince Elector of Bavaria, later Holy Roman emperor Charles VII, and Maria Amalia of Austria.