Lot 41: JACOPO STRADA

DESIGN FOR AN ELABORATE CASSETTA SURMOUNTED BY A FIGURE OF PRUDENCE, WITH FEMALE ALLEGORICAL FIGURES IN OVALS FLANKED BY CARYATIDS HOLDING FESTOONS, THE CASSETTA RESTING ON FOUR SPHINXES

11 3/16 by 16 1/2 in; 284 by 421 mm

Pen and brown ink and wash

San Francisco 2007, reproduced p. 27

Among the most important surviving examples of Italian secular goldsmiths' work is the famous Farnese casket, now in the Museum of Capodimonte, Naples. (1) According to Vasari, it was the work of the Florentine goldsmith Manno Sbarri and the the rock-crystal cutter Giovanni Bernardi, after designs by Perino del Vaga and others. The casket depicted here appears to be a similarly elaborate object with a small inset oval which could easily have been executed in rock-crystal. Another version of this design was in the collection of E. Perman in Stockholm, one of a group of twenty-four goldsmiths' designs associated with the work of Salviati which were purchased by Perman in Bologna between the wars and remained in Sweden until they were dispersed. (2)

1. See J.F. Hayward, Virtuoso Goldsmiths, and the Triumph of Mannerism 1540-1620, London 1976, reproduced pls. 321-327
2.See Ibid., p.144; p. 346, reproduced pl. 86, as School of Salviati