A Romanesque Gilt Bronze Aquamanile, Germany, Early 12th Century

in the form of a senmurv, the body with waterspout to the mouth and filling through the tail, the handle configured as a curvilinear extension of the tail, descending along the body and around the front wings, the body engraved with scrolling palmettes to the front and detailed feathers on the back, with expressive facial features and a long tuft of chased feathers on chest  

In overall good condition, missing cover of filling tube, outlet to lower front of body plugged, some damage to support beneath the tail, minor denting on wings, with traces of original silver gilding on eyes, and traces of gilding to body, as viewed.
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An aquamanile is an ewer or jug-type vessel made in the form of an animal or human figure. It usually contained water for the washing of hands (aqua + manos). Persian or Iraqi aquamaniles are known from the early Abbasid period (750-1250 AD) and predate any zoomorphic aquamaniles known in Europe. A bronze aquamanile in the form of an eagle bearing the date 180 AH/ 796-797 AD, is in The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. no.IR-1567), see Amsterdam 1999, p.226, no.199. Trade and diplomatic contacts between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire brought the idea of the aquamanile to Europe where the concept was taken up enthusiastically by bronze casters and remained popular until the Renaissance. Its exotic Middle Eastern origins are embodied in the form that we see here.  

This newly discovered aquamanile is an important addition to the small group of nine so-called "dragon" or "griffin" aquamaniles of the twelfth century that were originally documented by Otto von Falke and Erich Meyer in 1935 (Falke and Meyer 1935, pp.39-40).The locations of two of these aquamaniles (Falke and Meyer nos.274 and 275) were unknown at the time of publication, but the other seven are all in public collections. Best known are the magnificent examples in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Falke and Meyer no.265) and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Falke and Meyer no.266), which are extensively decorated with gilding, silvering and niello inlay. Less elaborate are the examples in the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart (Falke and Meyer no.267, formerly in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich), the Musée du Louvre in Paris (Falke and Meyer no.272), the Allgäu Museum in Kempten in Bavaria (Falke and Meyer no.273), the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (Falke and Meyer no.276) and the Kestner Museum in Hanover (Falke and Meyer no.277).

Although the Vienna and London aquamaniles were very probably made in the same workshop around 1130, none of the surviving aquamaniles is a duplicate of any of the others (Mende 1992, pp.109-132). Each is unique and each presents significant differences both of form and decoration from all the others in the group. Despite this, however, they share a number of common features, which suggests not only that all may have been ultimately dependent upon a similar type of model but also that several of them may have been products of the same workshop. In this respect, the newly discovered example conforms to pattern. In purely formal terms, it is close to but not identical with the now restored example in Stuttgart, with which it also shares several decorative features in common (Mende 2010, pp.71-83). Both have a similar raised feather pattern on the chest, as also do the examples in Vienna and London. In addition, the inscribed rectangular decoration on the wings of the newly discovered example can be paralleled both on the Stuttgart version, as well as on the versions in Nuremberg and Hanover. On the aquamanile in Paris, decoration of the same type appears on the chest. On the chest of the version in Hanover, on the other hand, there are engraved feathers that match the feathers on the back of the newly discovered example. In no two cases are these engraved motifs absolutely identical, but it seems probable that they formed part of the decorative repertoire of the workshops that were responsible for the examples in Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Hanover and Paris. Their appearance on the newly discovered aquamanile suggests that it was the product of one of these workshops, perhaps even the one that made the Stuttgart version, since, as is indicated by the accompanying technical analysis, both are cast using a not dissimilar alloy. Falke and Meyer regarded the Stuttgart aquamanile as the product of a Lower Saxon workshop of the mid-twelfth century and a similar attribution seems probable for the newly discovered version, particularly since the engraved scrollwork to either side of the raised feather pattern on the chest can be paralleled exactly in Lower Saxon manuscript illumination of the period. There is, for example, a precise match between the distinctive seven-lobed composite flowers of the scrollwork and the flowers that appear in the decoration of the Ratmann Missal of 1159 from Hildesheim (Hildesheim Domschatz MS 37) (Kauffmann 1992, no.31.).

Although the animal represented by these aquamaniles is conventionally described as a dragon or griffin, it should more properly be identified as the senmurv of ancient Iran that symbolised the khvarnah (divine glory or good fortune) of the semi-mythological dynasty of the Kayanid dynasty of Greater Iranian tradition and folklore. Its magical properties are sufficiently close to those of the syena bird in the Vedic literature of India as to make it probable that both have a common origin (For a discussion on the origins of this name, please see: Trever 1938, Pope and Ackerman 1938-39, p.737-738, Harper 1961, p.95-101, Berlin 1989, cat.no.4/74, Brussels 1993, pp.114-118, Charitat and Leclerc 2001, pp.117 and pp.120, Ferrier 1989, p.321, no.10). The earliest surviving images of the beast are to be found in Scythian art of the sixth century BCE, but it is in the Parthian world during the early third century CE and more particularly during the Sassanian period between the third and the seventh centuries CE that it is most frequently depicted in the form in which it appears in these aquamaniles.

A Sassanian silver plate in the British Museum of the seventh century CE or slightly later (WA 124095, illustrated here) presents a very close parallel, particularly since the senmurv is shown with the raised feather pattern on the chest that is also to be found on the Vienna, London and Stuttgart aquamaniles as well as on the newly discovered example.  Attention should also be drawn to the foliate motif beneath the tail on British Museum plate: as has recently been pointed out, in the case of the aquamaniles this has been transformed into the rear support that occupies precisely the same position beneath the tail (Brussels 1993, cat.no.71, Demange 2006, cat.no.55 and Mende 2010, p.77).

Similar images of the senmurv appear elsewhere in Sassanian art, ranging from rock carvings to silver, glass and textiles (See Demange 2006, cat.nos.46, 56, 71, 76 and 82 for examples in silver and cat.nos.129 and 130 for examples on silk). On the relief sculptures at Taq-i Bustan, which date from the late sixth or early seventh century CE, it is worth noting that the garments worn by Khosrau II are the only ones to be decorated with the motif, almost certainly because of its close royal associations (Brussels 1993, figs.99 and 101 and p.87 for the Taq-i Bustan reliefs). Following the Arab conquest of Ctesiphon in 637 CE and collapse of the Sassanian dynasty in the aftermath of the battle of Nahavand, decorative motifs associated with Sassanian workshops were readily incorporated by craftsmen working for the new rulers into their own designs. A well-known silk in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated here, the provenance and date of which have been re-assigned on no fewer than four occasions over the last forty years, may serve as an example (Baker 1995, pp.40-42). Although no such silks have been found in Iran, this fragment of probably post-Sassanian date is grouped with others showing similar iconography and style, including two fragments in Paris, the so-called Shroud of St Rémi now in Rheims and a magnificent kaftan from a tribal grave at Mochtchevaya Balka in the North Caucasus (Brussels 1993, cat. nos.127 and 128, and Demange 2006, cat. nos.129 and 130).

In addition to textiles, Islamic craftsmen employed the motif of the senmurv in many other different contexts. It is to be found in the relief carvings of the Umayyad desert palaces at Khirbat al-Mafjar and Mshatta, in the well-known series of stucco plaques from Chal Tarkhan-Eshaqabad near Ravy of the same period that are now divided between museums in London, Berlin, Chicago, Philadelphia, Stockholm and Tehran, in Abbasid lustreware, on a tenth-century octagonal silver plate from Iran that is now in Berlin (Museum für Islamische Kunst, inv. no.I.4926), in Syrian glass, in manuscripts ranging in date from the early eleventh century to the middle of the sixteenth century, as well as on many other types of objects (Hamilton 1959, pl.XXIX, no.26, Hillenbrand 1980, p.72, Brussels 1993, cat.no.11, Wenzel 1988, pp.45-72, see p.48, no.9, Wellesz 1959, no.30 and 60).

Silks of Eastern Mediterranean origin are known to have been in circulation in Western Europe from as early as the sixth century CE, but it is not until the eleventh century CE that the motif of the senmurv begins to appear with any frequency in the art of the region (Grabar 1971, pp.678-707 and Jacoby 2004, pp.228-231). Although textiles very probably inspired the group of aquamaniles to which the newly discovered example belongs, there is one very particular feature that raises the possibility that the model for the present example may have been a silver object rather than a textile.  The heads of the versions in Vienna and London are close to those found on the British Museum dish, although less so to the silk in the Victoria and Albert Museum previously referred to. They are recognisable as canine heads. This is not the case with the heads on the versions in Paris, Hanover and Nuremberg, which have prominent snouts or beaks and more closely resemble the heads of birds or dragons. Neither is it the case with the head of the present example. The closest parallel to this is to be found not in Sassanian art as such, but rather in the silver that was made in the course of the eighth century in Sogdiana between the Oxus and the Jaxartes rivers. Two instances that may be cited occur on silver objects of Sogdian origin in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg on both of which the heads have elongated snouts with a prominent hump on the ridge of the nose that is similar to what is found on the newly discovered aquamanile (Marschak 1986, fig.23 and 58).

Whether the workshop that made it was copying a model of Sassanian or Islamic origin may never be ascertainable, but what is abundantly clear is that this aquamanile is not only a rare and remarkable object in its own right but is also of extraordinary interest in the way in which it shows how craftsmen in twelfth century Germany were drawn to the exoticism of a cosmological motif of Indo-Iranian origin that had made its first appearance in Scythian art almost two millennia before (Trever 1938, p.32, Meyer 1959, pp.316-322, Dodd 1969, pp.220-232).