Notes

A very rare and important german bronze stag aquamanile, the beast modelled in a standing position, its head with mouth open forming the spout and with inward curving branched horns and turned-down lower lip, the top of the head with a hinged cover (a replacement), the bulbous body tapering towards the haunches and engraved with rows of triangular chequered panels divided by ropework and floral borders across the chest, the sides and haunches also freely engraved with stylised flowerheads and scrolling foliage, the handle formed as an elongated young deer,whose forelegs rest on the neck, on the rump of the stag is a figure of a monkey wearing a peaked cap which he holds with his right hand and drinks from a goblet held in his left hand, his leg astride the short tail of the stag, 11 ¼ in. long, 10 ½ in. high, Hildesheim, first quarter 13th Century.
Incised patterns of the type found on this aquamanile occur on two dragon aquamaniles illustrated by Erich Meyer, "A Romanesque Aquamanile in the form of a Dragon", Burlington Magazine, April 1950, p. 103. Of these dragon aquamaniles the one most reminiscent of the present aquamanile (fig. 8) formerly in the Thyssen Collection and now in the Reinhart Collection, is attributed by Meyer to Lower Saxony and probably to Hildesheim. The other dragon aquamanile illustrated by Meyer, figs. 1, 9 and 10, is considered by the author to be from the more normal centre for such work, Lower Lorraine. No other stag aquamaniles of this extremely rare Saxon group appear to be recorded. Of the eight aquamaniles shaped as stags illustrated by Von Falke and Meyer, Bronzegeräte des Mittelalters, none bear any close relationship to the present example.