Auction Closed
November 20, 08:47 PM GMT
Estimate
80,000 - 120,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
A GERMAN SILVER TORAH SHIELD, JOHANN VALENTIN SCHÜLLER, FRANKFURT AM MAIN, CIRCA 1700
of cartouche form in cast filigree sections, the sides with Renaissance caryatid brackets, mounted above the compartment with three crowns, hung with two bells, fitted with one reversible portion plaque, the chains with cartouche-form hook, in an early 18th century French frame shadowbox, from Julius Lowy, New York.
shield marked on top of shield and hook
length 9¾ in.
25 cm
The Michael and Judy Steinhardt Collection, Sotheby's, New York, April 29, 2013, lot 94
New York, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, The Collector's Room: Selections from the Michael and Judy Steinhardt Collection, 1993, no. 71, illus. fig. 6, p. 10, and fig. 7, p. 11
The shield conforms to a type popular in Frankfurt. Similar examples are a complete example (F740) and a fragment F439 in the Jewish Museum, New York, both marked by Johann Michael Schüller (active 1684-1718), brother of Johan Valentin Schüller; see Crowning Glory Silver Torah Ornaments of the Jewish Museum New York, 1996, pp. 84-85. Another was in the Jacobo Furman Collection marked by Johann Valentin Schüller (JAF4); see The Jacobo and Asea Furman Collection of Judaica, 1997, pp. 56-57.
In "The Golden Age of Jewish Ceremonial Art in Frankfurt," published in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 1986, Vivian B. Mann lists a third shield in the Klagsbald Collection, Paris, marked only with Frankfurt mark (Synagogue, fig. 94), and two other unmarked shields in Cluny Museum Paris (INV. no. 12251), Synagogue, fig. 95 and the Heichal Shlomo Museum (no. 118-0515; Yehadah I. Bialer, Jewish Life in Art and Tradition, New York, 1976, p. 115. She notes another example exhibited in the Royal Albert Hall, London, 1877, cat. no. 1459.
