Objekt 3157
Statuette of King David
Description
This statuette of King David is both complex and enigmatic. An Augustan cameo of a Gorgon’s head serves as a face, and as David counts as a forefather of Jesus, he wears a tiny figure of the Virgin and Child on his breast. The Staufen cameo of a lion at the Virgin’s feet symbolizes Jesus as the lion of Judah. The prophets on the enamelled plaques inside the arches are an allusion to Jesus’s role as Messiah. The figure was a gift of Master Johannes, physician to Duke Leopold I of Austria.
Object description
Figure: gold
Mount: gilded silver; enamel, garnets, glass, sardonyx cameo
Base (betw. 1477 and 1511): gilded wood
Upper Rhine, Constance (?), Late 13th/early 14th cent.
1882.80.a.
Aus dem Anteil des Stadtkantons