In this excellently produced supplement to the Wyvern Collection catalogues, Paul Williamson provides detailed records of the objects acquired by the collection since 2020. It follows a series of Wyvern Collection catalogues written by Williamson and published in 2018, 2019, and 2021, which covered the collection’s medieval and Renaissance metalwork, ivory carvings, and enamels in greater length. Additionally, a fourth volume on Byzantine and Sasanian metalwork and enamels, written by Marco Aimone, was published in 2020.
In the foreword Sir Paul Ruddock writes that the new acquisitions of the Wyvern Collection, part of the Wyvern Research Institute in London, warranted the addition of appendices to earlier volumes. These are fully published in this supplement by Williamson, comprising entries for twenty-one works of art produced from the late twelfth century to around 1565 in a wide range of materials and techniques. The works are made in metal, enamel, wood, stone, ceramic, and glass, and originate from locations in western Europe (Germany, France, Spain, England, Italy, and the Netherlands). Williamson does well to note the major centers of medieval and early modern art production chief among these works, including Abruzzo, East Anglia, Île-de-France, Limoges, Lorraine, Lyon, Magdeburg, and Urbino.
Each entry is a jewel box of a record. There are full-page photographs of the works of art with several more detailed images and figures of key related objects. The Wyvern Collection’s highly technical photography in this catalogue is a gift to readers, providing excellent documentation in the form of fine feature images. Williamson’s careful catalogue descriptions treat each work’s compositional makeup, and are especially strong in recording the artistic techniques and methods that went into its creation, as well as its size, form, function, and iconography. The entries contain provenance notes, especially helpful in obtaining sale information and names of previous owners (to name a few, Lucien Cottreau, John Hunt, and Édouard de Rothschild), and major bibliographic references. Notably, many of the works of art have left no trace in scholarly literature and are likely published here for the first time. Williamson includes a solid bibliography (91-93) and a helpful index (95-96) at the end of the volume.
Williamson’s expertise truly shines through in this volume, owing to the depth of his descriptions and vast knowledge of the corpus of medieval and early modern art. It would be remiss not to acknowledge the author’s prolific record of curatorship and scholarship in the field of art history, and his native high ability to recognize artistic networks and forge connections between works of art. The Wyvern Collection catalogues are all strong in this scholarly originality—publishing a core group of medieval and Renaissance works from an important private collection—cohesively organized, rich in material and iconographic information, and well documented through skillful photography. Williamson’s rich vocabulary alone makes these catalogues a useful primer for readers of all backgrounds. Additionally, the ability of readers to visualize the objects being described is the real test of a good catalogue entry, and Williamson delivers this in full. For instance, he calls the earliest work in this volume, a late twelfth-century bronze stag aquamanile, a “stocky quadruped” with “stumpy legs,” a cylindrical body, and “cursorily executed eyes,” forming a vivid picture of the stout animal vessel (12).
Another early work of remarkable note, a twelfth-century portable altar with a large granite plaque, probably made in France, was reworked in the fourteenth century into an icon of the True Cross (cat. 7). Portable altars famously maintain layered uses and reworkings throughout the Middle Ages, sometimes appearing today as casket-like structures with feet, or sometimes worked into book covers, or, as here, converted into an upright, tablet-like form. The Wyvern portable altar’s gilt-copper revetment is spectacular, containing an overall pattern of fleur-de-lys and quatrefoils with a large cut-out cross pattée in the center. This cross opening, revealing the backside of the granite, allows readers to see an exceptional detail about the work—the original back became its front. Since the Wyvern portable altar appears to be unpublished and has long been in private hands, it is not yet in the usual sources or found in databases, such as the “Medieval Portable Altar Database,” the work of historian Sarah C. Luginbill (https://medievalportablealtars.com/the-database/), or the database of the Index of Medieval Art (https://theindex.princeton.edu/); Williamson’s entry on it will doubtless facilitate this wider findability.
This Wyvern Collection volume is especially rich in works of art from Limoges, including champlevé enamel works of the early thirteenth century: a reliquary châsse depicting apostles, saints, and angels, a plaque of three angels, and a pair of candlesticks (cats. 2, 3, and 4, respectively). Interestingly, Williamson indicates a discovery by a Wyvern Collection researcher, who determined that the three angels plaque (cat. 3) once formed the door panel of a reliquary châsse which from 1999 was already in the Wyvern Collection. This discovery within the collection certainly strengthens the correspondence of the works of art as they slot into and alongside more widely studied medieval and early modern works. Also from Limoges, and used as the dust jacket image of this volume, is a circa 1500 enamel plaque attributed to the Master of the Large Foreheads (cat. 12). This enamel plaque depicts the scene of the Adoration of the Magi at the moment where the Christ Child reaches for gold coins in the overturned hat of the eldest Magus. Williamson suggests that this popular iconography has a greater significance for viewers of early printed images and illuminations in devotional books, noting the possibility for exchange between the earliest Limoges enamellers and other artists and in the vibrant, increasingly interconnected world of 1500. One of two latest Limoges works from the mid-sixteenth century, an enamel panel depicting the Deposition of Christ, is notable for its use of distinctive “wispy clouds” based on earlier Limoges models (cat. 20). The other, a circa 1560 copper enamel ewer with the procession of Juno and Mars, is skillfully executed in grisaille with gilding (cat. 21). Similar to the Adoration plaque, Williamson notes this vessel possesses strong visual links to contemporary engravings, noting the work of the Italian printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi (ca. 1480-1534), and that the ewer’s figural work likely served as a model for workshops producing enamels in early modern Limoges.
There is a series of entries for Italian Renaissance maiolica ceramics from Gubbio and Urbino. The tin-glazed earthenware plates and bowls depict various mythological figures and narratives, including scenes with Dido and Aeneas from Virgil’s Aeneid, the Sword of Damocles, and Hercules fighting the Centaurs (cats. 17, 18, and 19, respectively). Nearly contemporary in date to these vessels is a painted glass roundel depicting Sorgheloos, the personification of “Carefree” in medieval Dutch, in an allegorical model of poverty (cat. 14). The moralizing scene, partly based on the Christian parable of the Prodigal Son, depicts a Northern Netherlandish scene of great domestic interest. The rugged-looking Sorgheloos is cooking at the hearth in his sparse home, the allegorical figure of Poverty is gleaning outside the door, and there are typical household utensils stored against one wall. Williamson writes that the Wyvern roundel is one of four known roundels with this scene—one is in Christ Church in Llanwarne, and two are in institutional collections (London, Victoria and Albert Museum, C.65-1929, and New York, The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999.24.3)—making this roundel a rather rare survival.
The Wyvern Collection catalogues are treasures to read. Moreover, this volume and other catalogues like it are important publications as they offer new and valuable starting points for scholars of medieval and early modern visual culture. They bring little-known and little-reproduced iconographic and material evidence to light, which would otherwise be out of reach of the researching public. As well, the Wyvern Collection catalogues establish a wider network of names, dates, and notices of sale information, which is helpful to expanding horizons in the field of provenance studies. Initial fruits of this opening of the Wyvern Collection are evident in a recent collaborative exhibition, New Views of the Middle Ages: Highlights from the Wyvern Collection, curated by Professor of Art History Kathryn Gerry and her students at Bowdoin College. New encounters with objects (owing to Williamson’s earlier published catalogues) inspired a loan from the Wyvern Collection, which was installed in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art from August 2020 to August 2021. It was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue, edited by Gerry and published with Scala Publishers in 2020, and a website with virtual galleries (https://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/digital/wyvern/about.html).
Overall, the Wyvern Collection catalogues make a stimulating addition to the field and rank highly among catalogues of private collections, which seem to be appearing more frequently in the last few years. I was reminded of “The Medieval Body” exhibition organized by Sam Fogg and Luhring Augustine in 2022, which produced an excellent catalogue of the same name (I might also add I had the good fortune to see the exhibition in New York, and I procured the catalogue with great speed). These precious glimpses of privately held works are inspirational and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of our cultural heritage. And to his enormous credit, Williamson treats each work of art with scholarly authority but also with stirring appreciation. The result is a series of highly valuable publications of the Wyvern Collection, which link readers with objects and facilitate research on a broader scale. New connections will continue to bear great fruit, even more so as the objects take center stage with a shared appreciation for art historical research and scholarship.