REYMOND, Pierre

The charger is painted on both the obverse and reverse side. The Defeat of Amalek is depicted on the obverse (shown here), while Moses summoning water from a stone with his staff and the Ten Commandments on the reverse.

Limoges became a centre for enamelling as early as the twelfth century, when the art flourished in monastic workshops. In the late fifteenth century, this city in central France emerged as a centre of secular as well as ecclesiastical enamel work, and the school flourished throughout the sixteenth century. Among the most famous and prolific of the enamel painters practicing in sixteenth-century Limoges was Pierre Reymond.

The earliest examples of Limoges painted enamel show religious scenes in the late Gothic style. About 1520, Italian Renaissance motifs appeared and became especially characteristic of the work of L�onard Limosin and Pierre Reymond. Painting in grisaille, or monochromatic painting intended to look like sculpture, was introduced at Limoges and became a speciality of Jean P�nicaud III (active mid-16th century).

The present Limoges grisaille painted enamel ewer is painted with Gideon and his army as they attack the Midianites, blowing trumpets and carrying ewers. The composition is after an engraving by Bernard Salomon from his series of Biblical illustrations for the Biblia Sacra. Salomon executed a set of 198 woodcuts illustrating the Old and New Testaments, first published in 1553.

This piece is of copper decorated with polychrome enamels and gilding with a female head on the top, a male head on the base, and on one side Cupid holding an arrow, and on each of the other sides a putto.

The Old Testament Book of Judges recounts the story of Jael and Sisera. Sisera was a cruel Canaanite leader who ruled the Israelites for twenty years. Barak defeated his nine hundred charioteers by a surprise Israelite attack. Sisera escaped and sought refuge in the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. She gave the terrified Canaanite sanctuary. When he fell asleep, she drove a tent peg into his brain. The act fulfilled the prediction of Debora, prophetess and Israelite leader, who foresaw that a woman would slay Sisera.

The present plaque is from a series, including the companion plaque, Solomon Turning to Idolatry (also in Walters Art Museum, Baltimore).

This tazza was part of a commission for a larger group of tableware which was a specialty of Pierre Reymond. It is inscribed with a Bible verse, Ecclesiastes 10:8, in Latin, QVI DIRVIT SEPM MORDEBIT EUM COLUBR ECCLESIAST. X (He who breaks through a hedge will be bitten by a snake).

The tazza is inscribed with a Bible verse, Ecclesiastes 10:8, in Latin, QVI DIRVIT SEPM MORDEBIT EUM COLUBR ECCLESIAST. X (He who breaks through a hedge will be bitten by a snake).

The central panel depicts The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, flanked by the Prophet Daniel and St Peter on the side panels. The composition of the central panel closely follows the engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael.