- 99
A rare gold tobacco box, unmarked, probably Dutch, circa 1690
Estimate
50,000 - 80,000 GBP
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Description
- A rare gold tobacco box, unmarked, probably Dutch, circa 1690
- Gold
- 8.7cm., 3 1/2 in. diameter 207.6gr., 6oz., 12dwt.
circular, the detachable cover finely engraved after Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617) with a putto seated astride a human skull and blowing bubbles, flanked on one side by a vase of flowers and on the other a smoking urn above the legend ‘QVIS EVADET,’ the underside also finely engraved with the initials TP in monogram below a nobleman’s coronet on a hatched ground and within a laurel wreath and acanthus leaf border
Catalogue Note
The phrase ‘Quis Evadet?’ (‘Who will be spared?’) is included in the original Hendrik Goltzius engraving of about 1590 from which the putto and his attributes on the cover of his box have been copied. An allegory of transience and ultimate decay, the subject was not only a favourite theme during the late 16th and 17th centuries, but it is entirely fitting for the decoration of a tobacco box.1 Goltzius’s engraving also included the following verse (in translation):
‘The Fresh and silver flower, fragant with the breath of spring,
Withers at once, its beauty perishes:
So the life of man, already ebbing in the newly born,
Vanishes like a bubble or like fleeting smoke.’
In the 17th century tobacco boxes were made in large quantities as European societies became addicted to nicotine. The Netherlands played an important role in the tobacco business; the region of Zeeland (Middleburg) quickly became the centre of Northern European trade in this exotic importation, largely thanks to the Dutch East India Company and its well-developed connections in the West Indies where its growers began to produce their own tobacco.
Typical Dutch tobacco boxes were made of silver or copper, either for the table-top or, of a smaller oblong form, for the pocket. This circular example in gold is extremely rare and no comparable box has yet been recorded, although a few circular English tobacco boxes of the period are known.
The owner of this extraordinary commission has unfortunately not been identified, but the coronet certainly denotes a European nobleman2 who might have even belonged to the Dutch East India Company and made his fortune in the tobacco trade.
1. For paintings after this engraving, see Luigi Miradori detto il Genovesino (1610-1654), Vanitas and Otto van Veen (ca.1556-1629) Homo Bulla.
2. This type of coronet can be found on many 17th century engraving sources as a reference to noblemen without specifically indicating their rank of nobility.
‘The Fresh and silver flower, fragant with the breath of spring,
Withers at once, its beauty perishes:
So the life of man, already ebbing in the newly born,
Vanishes like a bubble or like fleeting smoke.’
In the 17th century tobacco boxes were made in large quantities as European societies became addicted to nicotine. The Netherlands played an important role in the tobacco business; the region of Zeeland (Middleburg) quickly became the centre of Northern European trade in this exotic importation, largely thanks to the Dutch East India Company and its well-developed connections in the West Indies where its growers began to produce their own tobacco.
Typical Dutch tobacco boxes were made of silver or copper, either for the table-top or, of a smaller oblong form, for the pocket. This circular example in gold is extremely rare and no comparable box has yet been recorded, although a few circular English tobacco boxes of the period are known.
The owner of this extraordinary commission has unfortunately not been identified, but the coronet certainly denotes a European nobleman2 who might have even belonged to the Dutch East India Company and made his fortune in the tobacco trade.
1. For paintings after this engraving, see Luigi Miradori detto il Genovesino (1610-1654), Vanitas and Otto van Veen (ca.1556-1629) Homo Bulla.
2. This type of coronet can be found on many 17th century engraving sources as a reference to noblemen without specifically indicating their rank of nobility.