Museum accessions - additions to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, March, 2000 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has made a number of important acquisitions in the past year, some adding to the museum's strengths and others bringing smaller collections to the forefront. Most notable among the latter is a large Italian maiolica platter from the extensive service made by the renowned workshop of Guido Durantino in the ducal city of Urbino for Anne, duke of Montmorency (1493-1567), in 1535. Each piece of the service, which is today widely dispersed, is decorated with a different scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses, tales of transformation that have endured and charmed since the first century B.C. According to the inscription on the back, the platter depicts Athens besieged by King Minos, a story from Book VIII that tells of the war waged against the Athenians by Minos, the king of Crete, to avenge the death of his son. As was typical of artists of istoriato (roughly meaning story painted) maiolica, the designer based his composition on a print (in this case an early sixteenth- century woodcut) , adjusting it to fit the shape of the platter and enlivening it with his brilliant use of line and color. It is not known if the service was commissioned by the duke of Montmorency or presented to him as a gift. One of the most powerful men in France, serving in the courts of Francis I, Henry II, and Charles IX, he was a noted art collector and traveled to Italy often. What is clear is that the platter represents the work of one of the leading workshops during the high point of maiolica production and as such greatly enhances the Virginia Museum's small collection of these wares.

More extensive and better known are the museum's holdings of works by the workshop of Peter Carl Faberge. These have been enriched by the addition of an easel frame and an extremely rare full-size gueridon, or circular table. The frame, made of silver and set with fifteen semiprecious stones, bears the crest of Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917). The table, one of only eight recorded pieces of furniture by Faberge, stands out for its sheer elegance and the subtle orchestration of silver, nephrite, and exotic palisander wood. It was designed by Karl Gustav Hjalmar Armfelt, who was born in Finland and was in Saint Petersburg from 1886, when he was apprenticed to the silversmith Paul Sohlman. He qualified as a master silversmith and jeweler in 1904 and had a shop on the Ekaterinski Canal from then until the beginning of the revolution. The table may have been made by a cabinetmaker outside Faberges actual shop and then brought to splendid perfection by his workmen.

Adding to another of the museum's strengths is a tea set designed by the important early twentieth-century designer Josef Hoffmann, one of the founders of the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna in 1903.