Horse and Rider

Applied Arts of Europe

1630

Hans Ludwig Kienle
German, 1591–1653
Ulm, Germany

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 German silversmith who specialized in depicting animals. Conceived as a drinking cup, this work was destined for display on a buffet or sideboard. Kienle’s work belongs to a larger body of German Renaissance and Baroque sideboard silver that includes cups in the form of three-dimensional horses, lions, stags, and other animals. Horse-and-rider figural groups have their roots in earlier Greek and Roman sculpture. Renaissance princes often had themselves depicted in monumental form, wearing Classical dress or contemporary armor and sitting atop prancing or rearing steeds. 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. Kienle masterfully rendered the differentiation of human and equine musculature through the contrast of silver and silver-gilt surfaces, thus animating the already dynamic subject.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Applied Arts of Europe

Artist: Hans Ludwig Kienle
Title: Horse and Rider
Place: Ulm (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1630
Medium: Silver and silver gilt
Inscriptions: 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
Dimensions: H.: 31.5 cm (12 3/8 in.); 30.5 × 28.9 × 14.3 cm (12 × 11 3/8 × 5 5/8 in.)
Credit Line: Eloise W. Martin fund; through prior acquisition of the George F. Harding Collection; Henry Horner Strauss, Pauline S. Armstrong, Harry and Maribel G. Blum, Tillie C. Cohn, Richard T. Crane, Jr. Memorial, Stanford Marks, Michael A. Bradshaw and Kenneth S. Harris, Mrs. Edgar J. Uihlein Art Purchase, European Decorative Arts Capital Campaign funds; through prior acquisition from Albert D. Lasker; European Decorative Arts General, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Varley funds; through prior acquisition of the Kate S. Buckingham Gothic fund; Mary Swissler Oldberg fund; through prior acquisitions of the Howard V. Shaw Memorial and Kate S. Buckingham funds
Reference Number: 2003.114
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/181145/manifest.json

F. Luther, “Die Frankfurter Leihgabenastellung,” Kunstgewerbeblatt (Leipzig, 1893): p. 214.
Kaiser Friedrich-Museums-Verein, Austellung von Werken alter Kunst, (Berlin: 1906), p. 61, cat. No. 266
Otto von Falke, The Art Collection Eugene Gutmann (Berlin: Meisenbach Riffarth & Co., 1912), p. 42, cat. no. 135, pl. 35 (ill.).
Rijksmuseum, De Trimof van het Maniërisme: De Europese Stijl van Michelangelo tot El Greco onder de Auspiciën van de Raad van Europa (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1955), p. 198, cat. No. 428.
Hans R. Weihrauch, “Italienischen Bronzen als Vorbilder deutscher Goldsmiedekunst,” in Theodor Muller (ed)., Studien zur Geschichte der Europäischen Plastik (Munich: Hirmer, 1965): pp. 272-73, fig. 13 (ill.).
Marc Rosenberg, Der Goldschmiede Merkzeichen, vol. 3 (Frankfurt: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), p. 350, no. 4780.
Armin Panter, Hohenlohe: Das Kirchberger Kunstkabinett im 17. Jahrhundert (Germany: Hallisch-Frankisches Museums Schwabisch Hall, 1999), p. 98 (ill.).
Christies, Important Silver including Three Magnificent Renaissance Silver-Gilt Works of Art from the Collection of Fritz and Eugene Gutmann (London, 11 June 2003), pp. 148-49, 162-67, lot 163 (ill.).
Elspeth Moncrieff, “Gutmann Silver,” The Art Newspaper, no. 138 (July-August 2003): p. 39.
Ghenete Zelleke, “Cup in the Form of a Rearing Horse and Rider,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 29, 2 (2003), pp. 56-57 (ills.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, The Essential Guide, 4th Edition, (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2015), p. 128 (ill.).
Simon Goodman, The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Family’s Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis (New York: Scribner, 2015), p. 118.
Wolfram Koeppe, ed. Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 70-71, cat. no. 13 (ill.).

Frankfurt, Die Frankfurter Leihgabenaustellung, 1893.
Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich-Museums-Vereins, Austellung von Werken alter Kunst, January 27 – March 4, 1906.
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, De Triomf van het Maniërisme: De Europese Stijl van Michelangelo tot El Greco, July 1 – October 16, 1955.
New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Making Marvels: Art, Technology, and Entertainment at the Courts of Europe, November 18, 2019–March 1, 2020.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Inscriptions

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.