Norddeutsch um 1200

North German around 1200 Aquamanile Bronze, cast, engraved, chased, remnants of gilding. The hollow and very thin-walled casting vessel in the shape of a lion, cast using the lost wax technique, was once used for the liturgical washing of the priest's hands during the celebration of mass. The design of our aquamanile can be compared with a group of eleven other lion aquamaniles which, according to research by Otto von Falke and Erich Meyer (op. cit.), were made in a north German workshop, presumably in Lübeck, in the years around 1200 and which are now all kept in various museums, including the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the British Museum in London, the National Museum in Copenhagen and the cathedral treasury in Aachen. The X-ray fluorescence analysis of our lion from 2021, which has always been privately owned, did indeed reveal that there is no evidence of a post-medieval origin in the bronze alloy of copper, tin and lead. Secondly, and moreover, the alloy corresponds almost identically in its proportions of the various metals to the alloy of the lion aquamanile from the workshop group compiled by Falke and Meyer, which is kept in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (inv. no. KG 491) (cf. Otto Werner: Analysen mittelalterlicher Bronzen und Messinge. Teil IV, Berlin 1981, p. 186, analysis no. 238). Small chips on the back, there a small rectangular contemporary addition. Larger oval contemporary addition on the underside of the body. Closure on the top of the head not preserved, presumably a small addition to the edge of the opening. Rubbing to the surface, minor chips. 18.5 x 9 x 21 cm. Expertise Artemis Testing Lab, Louisville (USA) 15.12.2021 (X-RAY Fluorescence Report). - Afterlight Inc, 23.11.2022 (3D-CT scan). Provenance Collection of Captain Herbert Willaume Murray (1870-1931), London. - Their sale at Christie's, London, 1.12.1908, lot 43 - Acquired there from the art dealer Samuel Willson & Son, Strand, London. - Arnold Broomhall Willson (1871-1961), London. - Acquired from his estate by Frederick Bucher (1886-1971), Rhode Island, New York. - Inherited by his daughter Frederica Bucher Morrow Parreno (1915-1998), Rhode Island, New York. - Acquired from her estate by the present owner in 1998. Literature For comparable aquamaniles, see Otto von Falke, Erich Meyer: Romanische Leuchter und Gefässe. Giessgefässe der Gotik, Berlin 1935, pp. 60-61 and 110, nos. 361-371, pl. 149-151, figs. 337-340 and 343-349.