Art Institute of Chicago
Salt
NetherlandsLinkedCulture matchlcp-928afdc5bfad
- Date
- 1575/1600
- Medium
- Silver gilt
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Department
- Applied Arts of Europe
- Institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Object ID
- 51753
An allegorical female nude in a landscape appears on each of the four sides of this work, while a frieze of putti and fantastic sea creatures runs around the base. Such imagery was intended to evoke the interaction between sea and land that produces salt. This elaborately decorated salt holder would have graced the tables at lavish banquets during the Renaissance and, at the same time, served a useful function. Indeed, this work is a proper tribute to the precious commodity of salt, which served to make perishable food more palatable and was also a sign of great wealth.
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Stanley Keith
- Provenance
- Georg Reichenheim, Berlin, by 1898 [lent to Berlin 1898]; died 1903; his widow Margarete Reichenheim, née Eisner, who married Franz Oppenheim in 1907; she died 1935, Berlin; sale of the collection of Margarete Oppenheim, Julius Böhler, Munich, 22 May 1936, no. 182. William Randolph Hearst, New York and San Simeon, by 1944 [Brummer index card N6052 in the Cloisters Library and Archives, New York]; sold to Joseph Brummer, New York, 14 December 1944 [see source cited above]; sold by Joseph Brummer, New York, to the Art Institute, 1944, for $1,600.
Linked open data
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- Object type
- AAT300411548
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