Lot 6: A RARE RUSSIAN GOLD SNUFF-BOX SET WITH A MINIATURE

A RARE RUSSIAN GOLD SNUFF-BOX SET WITH A MINIATURE by Otto Samuel Keibel (1768-1809), marked with initials in an ovolo, with the St. Petersburg town mark, 1799, assay master Aleksander Ilyich Yashinov 1795-1826, later struck with two French post-1893 import marks for gold, the miniature by Augustin-Christian Ritt (1765-1799) Rectangular box with canted corners opening on the long side, the cover centred by a large glazed oval portrait miniature painted in watercolour and gouache on ivory, depicting a young child disguised as Cupid, within a gold mount, the cover, four long sides and base engine-turned with panels of fine reeding forming various types of stripes and cords, the borders also with fine guilloché reeding engraved with trailing foliage, the four canted corners engraved with rosettes on polished gold panels, burnished gold rims, the lid with incorporated thumbpiece 3¾ in. (95 mm.) wide

Ball & Graupe, Berlin, 28 June 1932, lot 122.

Born in Pasewalk (Prussia) in 1768, Otto Samuel Keibel struck his mark as a goldsmith and jeweller in St. Petersburg on 12 October 1797. 'In the early 19th century this was the best workshop for gold boxes' (A. von Solodkoff, Russian Gold and Silverwork, Fribourg, 1981, p. 218). The present box must be one of Keibel's first recorded works and the hallmark featuring his scrolling initials in a horizontal oval is particularly rare. Whilst the box is one of Keibel's earliest works, the miniature must be one of Ritt's last portraits. It had formerly been suggested that the sitter is Tsar Nicholas I as a child. Although this identification could not be substantiated, the sitter must have been important enough that Ritt painted him a second time. This variant, with minor differences in the foreground, and now cracked, is in the Hermitage (illustrated in A. A. Karev, Miniaturn'ij portret v Rossii XVIII veka, Moscow, 1989, colour pl. 60).

(SEE ALSO CATALOGUE BACK COVER FOR DETAILED ILLUSTRATION OF THE LID)