Hanukkah Lamp in Architectural Design, with Sailboat-Shaped Servant Light –...

Hanukkah Lamp in Architectural Design, with Sailboat-Shaped Servant Light – Germany, Ca. 1800

Wood, paint; silver, pierced, stamped, and engraved; coiled silver thread (filigree); gilt.
Hallmarks (marked in all parts): · Fineness mark "13"; · Initials "ML", possibly in reference to the silver assayer; · The initials "ML", combined with the number "13"; · Maker's marks – the initials "MA/T" inside a cloverleaf.

Hanukkah lamp in architectonic design, consisting of a rectangular wooden panel, painted black, overlaid in front with a metal ornament shaped like a victory arch, surmounted by a lion’s head, with a ring in its mouth, from which two chains hang down to connect to the bases of the columns of the arch, through a pair of holes near the bottom of each column.
On top of the wooden panel is a metal lintel, shaped like an open chest, which serves as the lamp’s drip pan. Suspended above the center of the drip pan is a strip of silver. Fixed into this metal strip is a row of narrow cylindrical tubes for the wicks. Above the silver strip is a removable silver gable pierced with vegetal patterns and shields, and inserted by means of three flat rectangular tabs into three corresponding slots situated just behind the back side of the chest-shaped lintel. At the center of the gable is an oval-shaped medallion, bearing a depiction of a markedly unusual scene (see above). The large, removable servant light – exquisitely fashioned in the shape of a miniature sailboat, with ropes made of twined silver thread running down from the masthead – has a zigzagging rod attached to the bottom of the hull, to be inserted into a ring at the top of the back of the gable. The entire lamp is supported on a rectangular stepped wooden base, which is painted black to match the main, vertical wooden panel.
A scene borrowed from Greek mythology appears on the medallion in the center of the gable. It shows the ethereally handsome divine hero Ganymede, son of the King of Troy, feeding the eagle which is about to abduct and transport him up to Mount Olympus. This mythological scene was to become a recurrent theme in European art, all the more so in the 18th and 19th centuries, expressed in a wide assortment of variations and mediums. But the version that appears here was apparently modeled specifically after a particular Roman marble relief dating from the first century BCE (collection of the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia, item no. ГР-3098). The scene also appears in the book titled "Gli antichi sepolcri" (Rome, 1697, plate no. 110).

Height: 38 cm (without gable: 26 cm.). Width: 26 cm. Depth: 8.5 cm. Good condition.

For comparison, see: Collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, item no. B76.0225, 118/701 (apparently created by the same craftsman); Mordechai Narkiss, The Hanukkah Lamp, "Bnei Bezalel", Jerusalem, 1939, p. 63 and item no. 151 (a Hanukkah lamp from the Feuchtwanger Collection, similarly featuring a mythological scene); The Stieglitz Collection, item no. 139; and The Jewish Museum London, item no. JM 269 ; Braunstein, item no. 173.
The precise original provenance of the Hanukkah lamp presented here is uncertain; in his book, Narkiss mentions similar lamps created in Berlin and Nuremberg. The lamp belonging to the Israel Museum collection is also attributed to Berlin, and two similar Hanukkah lamps sold through Sotheby’s in the 1980s were attributed to Frankfurt am Main.

Exhibition: Basel, Jewish Museum of Switzerland, JMS 1021.

Provenance:
1. Collection of Solomon David Schloss (1815-1911).
2. Lewis Raphael Castle (1858-1932), son of the above.
3. Peter Castle (1922-2011), grandson of the above.
4. Heirs of the above.
This item appears in the inventory list of the Schloss Collection, dated 1923 (see appendix, pp. 146-148), and is documented in a 1931 collection photograph (see p. 11).