About the Artwork
Brilliantly decorated in green, red, purple, yellow, and white enamels with blue and brown salt-glazes, this tankard features painted personifications of the planets around its body. An inscription around its neck indicates that it was made to commemorate a 1668 wedding. Vessels such as this one from Creussen, one of the premier centers for stoneware in seventeenth-century Germany, were the first in Europe to feature this type of bright polychrome enamel decoration on stoneware. Unlike some other stoneware of the period, Creussen wares were never mass-produced, making the three tankards in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts particularly notable.
Earthenware Jug with Planetary Gods
ca. 1668
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German
German
Salt-glazed stoneware with enamel decoration, pewter mounts
Overall: 8 1/4 × 6 1/4 × 5 inches (21 × 15.9 × 12.7 cm)
Ceramics
European Sculpture and Dec Arts
Gift of the Stroh Brewery Company in Memory of Peter W. Stroh
2002.62
This work is in the public domain.
Markings
Inscribed, around neck: [inscription indicating the object ws made to commemorate a wedding in 1668] Inscribed, around center of vessel, with names of planetary gods: SATVRNI. | IVPITER. | MARS. | SOL. | VENUS. | MERCVRI. | LVNA
Provenance
Stroh Brewery Company (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
2002-present, gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Darr, Alan. P. and Brian Gallagher. "Recent acquisitions (2000-2006) of European sculpture and decorative arts at The Detroit Institute of Arts." The Burlington Magazine 149, no. 1251 (June 2007): p. 452, pl. XII (ill.).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
German, Earthenware Jug with Planetary Gods, ca. 1668, salt-glazed stoneware with enamel decoration, pewter mounts. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of the Stroh Brewery Company in Memory of Peter W. Stroh, 2002.62.
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