About This Artwork

Hans Ludwig Kienle
Germany, Ulm

Cup in the form of a Rearing Horse and Rider, 1630

Silver, cast and partly gilt with repousse oval base
Height: 31.5 cm (12 3/8 in.)
Marks: signed and dated 'Hanns Ludovickh.Kienle.f.Vlmae, 1630'; hallmarked on edge of the base and on the bezel beneath the horse's head for Ulm and maker's mark; also marked on base with French post-1893 import mark
Restricted gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Stanford D. Marks, Mrs. Eric Oldberg and Mrs. Edgar J. Uihlein; Albert D. Lasker, Howard V. Shaw Memorial and European Decorative Arts funds; James W. and Marilynn Alsdorf, Pauline S. Armstrong, Harry and Maribel G. Blum, Michael A. Bradshaw and Kenneth S. Harris, Tillie C. Cohn, Richard T. Crane, Jr. Memorial, Eloise W. Martin, Henry Horner Strauss, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Varley and European Decorative Arts endowments; through prior acquisitions of Kate S. Buckingham and George F. Harding Collection in honor of Eloise W. Martin, 2003.114

European Decorative Arts
Gallery 234

This extraordinary sculptural group, which consists of a male nude astride a rearing horse, is a rare example of the work of Hans Ludwig Kienle, a silversmith from the South German city of Ulm who specialized in depicting animals. Conceived as a drinking cup, it was destined for display on buffets or sideboards, where it would have rested amidst other plate and porcelain, dazzling spectators at noble banquets. Kienle's work belongs to a larger body of German Renaissance and Baroque sideboard silver that included cups in the form of fully three-dimensional horses, lions, stags, and other animals. While these figure had detachable heads, as is the case with this horse, the vessels were more often purely ornamental, at times relating to heraldic devices associated with the owner, or to aristocratic pursuits such as hunting.

Such horse-and-rider figures have their roots in Greek and Roman sculpture. Seeking to align themselves with the classical tradition, princes of the Renaissance (and later periods) had themselves depicted in monumental form, wearing classical dress or contemporary armor, and siting atop prancing or rearing steeds. This visual formula was employed in small scale bronzes by such sculptors as Jean de Boulogne, or Giambologna. That Kienle based this silver cup on an earlier sculptural model is suggested by the existence of a bronze group of virtually identical subject, composition, and scale, made in northern Italy during the second half of the sixteenth century.

What makes Kienle's treatment of this subject so exceptional, however, is his skill at rendering it in precious metals. Working to suggest the differences between human and equine musculature, Kienle emphasizes these further by contrasting silver and gilt-silver surfaces, which animates to an even higher degree the already dynamic scene of an energetic horse kept under firm control by a skilled rider. This is a work of enormous importance, both as a work of sculpture and of the silversmith's art.