A Limoges enamel calendar plate for the month of March
Copper plate with monochrome enamel “en grisaille” picked out in gilt. Of shallow form with no basal ring and a narrow border. Decorated on both sides. To the front a depiction of two elegantly dressed hunters in a forest landscape, one with a bow taking aim at a stag fleeing through an archway. The well surrounded by a band of foliate tendrils, the border with grotesque chimaeras supporting scrollwork cartouche motifs, above a depiction of the zodiac sign Taurus (sic!) and below the inscription “MARS”. The underside with full counter enamel depicting a portrait of a monk in profile in a scrollwork surround bordered by chimaeras in four oval cartouches, dated 1560 and monogrammed “P.R.” A minor rim chip at nine o'clock, minor losses to the enamel and cracks around the rim. D 17.5 cm.
Limoges, studio of Pierre Reymond, 1560.
Pierre Reymond (around 1513 - around 1584) was one of the most famous enamellists of his era. His patrons included the queen of France Caterina de' Medici (1519 - 1589) and Anne de Montmorency (1493 - 1567). Reymond enjoyed exceptionally high renown as an artist, and even held the office of consul in 1560.
His monochromatic designs are particularly well-known. Irmgard Müsch dates his first use of grisaille to around 1540/45. This plate would have been part of a series of twelve, each representing the months January to December which Reymond produced from around 1560 at the latest. Just a few of these designs, produced in varying sizes and decoration, have survived to this day. The majority of them are housed in museum collections. A set of eleven plates from the series dated 1571 are housed in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (inv. no. LIM 67), and several similarly decorated single examples can be found in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (inv. no. 2001.331.), the County Museum of Arts in Los Angeles (inv. no. 48.2.5 - 48.2.8), the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges (inv. no. 998.1.1) and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inv. no. BK-NM-9694). A set of eleven polychrome plates is kept in the Kunstgewerbemuseum of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin (inv. nos. K 5006 - K 5016).
Literature
Cf. Netzer, Maleremails aus Limoges. Der Bestand des Berliner Kunstgewerbemuseums, Berlin 1999, no. 7.
Cf. Müsch et alii, Maleremails aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Braunschweig 2002, no. 83 ff.