Plate

One of the six small oval plates, decorated with enamel en grisaille in brown tones, with white accents. White meandering lines near the collar edges, changing into cartouches
filled with inscriptions referring to individual scenes on the vertical axis, are a common motif for the set. Between them, there is a floral vine. On the reverse side, there is a bust in profile, facing left or right. The vessels are put together into pairs according to the relationship resulting from a love story described in Metamorphoses by Ovid.

The vessel mirror is decorated with a hunting scene against the background of a landscape. A pair of dogs and hunters running with them, who are visible on the right, chase a beaver. Visible on the left, the bear stops and bites its own genitals (“dress”) off to stop the chase. The beaver’s “dress” in the Middle Ages was a valuable trophy to which curative properties were attributed. In cartouches on the axis of the plaque, there are inscriptions – at the top: Qvelqve fo[…]rachEt, at the bottom: SA. vie. On the reverse side, in the medallion, there is the head of a mythological figure with a representation of the image of Narcissus, shown
 from profile facing right, signed: NARSISVS. Like other scenes from this set, it was made presumably according to a drawing placed in French editions of Andrea Alciato Emblematum liber, a work by Andrea Alciato, prepared by Guillaume Roville from Lyon (1548), where the image is additionally accompanied by an inscription. The small plate forms a pair with a vessel decorated on the reverse side with the image of the nymph Echo in profile facing right (Wil.212).

The plate was shown to the Warsaw audience during An Exhibition of Antique and Art Objects in the palace of Count August Potocki and his wife at Krakowskie Przedmieście 32 (today the Museum of the University of Warsaw) in 1856. It is described (erroneously) in the catalogue of this exhibition under item 791/5.

Joanna Paprocka-Gajek