Cabinet (Kunstschrank)

Kunstschränke, cabinets created through the co-operation of joiners, inlay artists, carvers, lathe operators, jewellers, and painters, represent the high point of South German Late Renaissance furniture art. In their fabrication, as well as highranking customers – monarchs and aristocrats – the entrepreneurial traders of the period who organised the complicated work processes and who distributed the finished articles played a very important role. One such owner of a firm was the wealthy Augsburg patrician Philipp Hainhoffer (1611–1632), from whom presents were ordered for, among others, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1611–1632). The particularity of the Budapest cabinet stems from its rich inlay decoration. This embellishes the entire surface of the piece inside and out: set among mount decoration 63 and intertwined creeper with flowers and acorns, winged female masks, female figures playing lutes and violins, real and imaginary animals, and other motifs appear before us. The tympanon-type doors conceal boxes. While the intarsia version of the mount decoration found in jewellers’ pattern-books and the mottled bird motif are characteristically South German, the luxuriant mesh of creepers ending in animal heads and the grotesque elements indicate familiarity with the small engravings made by Jacques-Androuet Ducerceau (1510–1585) and Etienne Delaune (1519–1583). The compositions of both masters were popular in the second half of the 16th century; the latter – who was an engraver and jeweller – published his finely drawn and elegant engravings in 1576, precisely in Augsburg. The influence of these compositions shows outstandingly on this magnificent creation. On the South German Mannerist furniture – and on our piece also – there already appears drilled inlay, on the design of which the image is produced in a mosaic-like way from specifically Central European woods, utilising the natural beauty immanent in the wood.