A rare round plate: The Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace - Lot 26

A rare round plate: The Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace The plate is enamel on copper painted in grisaille with touches of polychrome, pinkish skin tones and gold highlights. The background is decorated with a scene taken from the Old Testament (Daniel 3, 8-30). On the left, the three young Hebrews in prayer and an angel are standing in a rounded oven, from which flames spread to the ground where three soldiers lie. On the right, King Nebuchadnezzar is watching from a seat on a small, terraced promontory. He is surrounded by dignitaries and men-at-arms. In the background, a street full of people is depicted amidst Antique-style buildings. The frieze is decorated with gold arabesques, while the wing features a motif repeated nine times, made up of foliage and horns of plenty surmounted by vases of fruit. The frieze is decorated with putti, two kneeling and four running. The border is white enamel with black cross hatching at regular intervals. On the reverse, the central cavetto is decorated with a radiating foliage motif, surrounded by four figures holding scrolling strapwork in both hands. The strips are entwined to form four heart-shaped medallions, each bearing a satyr mask. The inner edge of the rim is decorated with gilded arabesques, and the rim itself with eight foliage motifs ending in dog heads. A few small losses to the enamel on the edge and at the joint of the rim. Localized wear to the gilding on part of the inner rim on both sides of the dish. Pierre REYMOND (1513-1584) Limoges, vers 1575 Monogrammed P.R., to the left of the soldiers struck down by the blaze Diameter: 26.5 cm. Provenance: Sotheby’s London, European Works of Art and Sculpture, 10 December 1992, lot 226. Comparative bibliography: - S. Baratte, Les émaux peints de Limoges, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2000. - T. Rappé & L. Boulkina, Les émaux peints de Limoges de la collection de l’Ermitage, Saint-Pétersbourg, 2005. The main scene was inspired by an engraving by Bernard Salomon published in Quadrins Historiques de la Bible by Claude Paradin, Lyon, with Jean de Tournes, 1553. It illustrates an episode from the third chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Three young Hebrews, entrusted by King Nebuchadnezzar II with the stewardship of the province of Babylon, refuse to bow down before a golden statue erected on his orders. As a result, they were thrown alive into a fiery furnace. An angel appeared to them in the midst of the flames, and they miraculously emerged unharmed. This extraordinary event led the pagan king to convert to the God of Israel (Daniel 3, 8-30). These small dishes, or large plates, are rare in the painted enamel production of the 16th century. To date, only pieces attributed to Pierre Reymond and his workshop are known, the most famous of which are the series illustrating the Story of Psyche, inspired by engravings by the Master of the Die and Agostino Veneziano, particularly those in the service bearing the arms of Chaspoux de Verneuil. The diameter of these pieces, generally between 23 and 25 cm, is slightly smaller than that of the series decorated with scenes from the Old Testament, to which our dish belongs, of which only three other examples have been identified in public collections. Two are in the Musée du Louvre: Gideon Defeats the Midianites and The Death of Joab (inv. R 307 & R 308, cf. Baratte, pp. 256-257) and the third, from the Basilewski collection, is now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg: Elisha and the Miracle of the Loaves (inv. Ф-296, cf. Rappé & Boulkina, pp. 157-158, no. 58).