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for Adam van Vianen
Adam van Vianen
Dutch, 1568/69 - 1627
He probably trained in the workshop of the goldsmith Bruno Ellardsz. van Leydenberch and was associated with such leading artists of his day as Hendrick Goltzius and Pieter Lastman. In contrast to his brother, (2) Paulus van Vianen, Adam never travelled far from his home town. In his youth he is known to have trained as an engraver, and at least two portraits and a map of Utrecht by him survive (see 1984–5 exh. cat., nos 81, 124), but it was in the modelling and embossing of silver that he excelled.
Adam’s earliest known work in silver is a standing cup (1594; St Petersburg, Hermitage); this is a vessel of standard Mannerist form, individual only in the use of a highly pictorial, embossed frieze around the centre. From this point he gradually explored the possibilities of the auricular style; in 1610 Paulus visited Utrecht, and it was probably then that the two brothers exchanged ideas on the subject. Certainly their experimentation with the style seems to have followed parallel lines, appearing first as a tentative border decoration and evolving into a fully developed decorative style soon after 1610. Adam took it to its extreme in the extraordinary silver-gilt ewer commissioned by the Amsterdam guild of silversmiths in memory of Paulus (1614; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). In this piece, raised from a single sheet of silver, Adam entirely broke away from Renaissance conventions of design and produced a strikingly original work that is largely abstract and completely sculptural in its conception. It is indicative of the fame of both brothers that the Amsterdam guild—with whom Paulus had no recorded association—should have wished to commemorate him and that it should have chosen to give the commission to a goldsmith from Utrecht rather than to one of its own members. The ewer soon acquired a fame of its own and appears as a still-life element in many paintings of the period
Timothy Schroder. "Vianen, van." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T089208pg1 (accessed May 8, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
Flemish, 1575 - 1632
