drawing
- Museum number
- 1874,0808.80
- Description
-
A pair of tongs formed by a duck's bill, the handles terminating in serpents' heads
Pen and brown ink, with grey-brown wash, over traces of black chalk
- Production date
- 1514-1546
- Dimensions
-
Height: 68 millimetres
-
Width: 230 millimetres (irregularly cut, sheet made up)
- Curator's comments
- Hartt thought that this object was intended to hold paper, but it seems more likely that the duck's beak was intended to ensnare food at banquets, as several similar ideas for cutlery by Giulio survive (for example École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, O.1394). The design seems to have been among the most popular of Giulio's proposals for silverware, and several copies are known: in the Codex Strahov in Prague (fol. 130/226), and in volumes in Brno (MK 4 (I. 214), fol. 30) and the Museo Galileo, Florence (MED 2172/01, fol. 55).
Gere noted in the interleaved copy of the 1962 catalogue: 'Jennifer Montagu in 1965 draws attention to the appearance of a precisely similar pair of tongs in an engraved plate, inscribed 'Sandrart del', in Sandrart's 'Teutsche Academie', 1679, II Theil.
Lit.: P. Pouncey and J.A. Gere, 'Italian Drawings in the BM, Raphael and His Circle', London, 1962, I, no. 131, II, pl. 108; G. Lewis, in G. Rebecchini and B. Furlotti eds, 'Giulio Romano: la forza delle cose', exh. cat., Mantua, 2022, pp. 122-3, no. 10.
Pouncey & Gere 1962
See T,11.71 for curatorial comment.
Literature: Hartt 132.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2022-2023, 8 Oct - 8 Jan, Mantua, Palazzo Te, Giulio Romano: l'arte de vivere
- Acquisition date
- 1874
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1874,0808.80
