Ewer: The Abduction of Deianira, after Giambologna
Tobias Kramer (1582-1634) · 1615
The centaur Nessus rears up with Deianira, the wife of Hercules, thrown across his back, her arms flung out as he carries her off. The story is from Ovid's Metamorphoses, but the pose is borrowed almost exactly from a famous small bronze by Giambologna, the Flemish-born sculptor of the Medici court. The Augsburg goldsmith Tobias Kramer cast the group in silver, chased every hair of the centaur's tail and gilded selected parts so that the two bodies glow against the white metal. Then he turned it into a ewer: Nessus's head is hinged and opens so that water can be poured from the horse-man's mouth. A matching basin once accompanied it, and the original base, with the maker's marks, has been lost.
Kramer probably made the ewer and basin in sixteen fifteen as a gift from the grand master Eustachius von Westernach to the Teutonic Order. Its later path is uncertain; it is said to have been seized at Modena in seventeen ninety-six by the French armies, and it was handed to the museum's director Dominique Vivant Denon in November eighteen hundred and two. It has been part of the Louvre's holdings since eighteen hundred and nine.
Did You Know? The centaur's head is hinged and opens so that water pours from his mouth.
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