What a grotesque scene! A glutton with a huge belly is squeezed into a barrow. He’s holding a wine bottle in his right hand, and a purse in his left. A colossal cuckold’s cap, decorated with a pilgrim’s shell, covers his head. In front of the glutton, we see a pilgrim’s flask and a lantern. He seems to have no idea who is pushing the barrow or where his life will end. It’s the devil himself who is conveying the sinner directly to hell. Satan has cleverly concealed his body in a wine-barrel, which is attractively hung with all sorts of cooking utensils, fish and pieces of meat. But the identity of the Prince of Hell is betrayed by the horns on his head and his cloven hooves.
The Nuremberg goldsmith Christoph Lindenberger created this wonderfully ambiguous group of figures about 1575. On the one hand, they serve as a warning against drunkenness and gluttony. On the other, they actually promote the vice! If we lift the devil’s head or the glutton’s cuckold’s cap, the figures can be used as drinking vessels! One of the artist’s contemporaries, a Nuremberg pastor called Mathesius, disapproved of such follies:
“Nowadays the children of this world and the imbibers drink out of ships and windmills, apples, pears, cockerels, monkeys, peacocks, monks, nuns, peasants, bears, lions, stags, horses, ostriches, owls, swans, swines*, and other unusual drinking vessels, which the devil devised, to the great displeasure of God and heaven.”
- Location & Dating
- Nuremberg, 1569-1576
- Material & Technique
- Silver, embossed, cast, cut, chiselled, engraved, punched, etched, gilded; glass
- Dimenions
- B 29,5 cm, H 18,7 cm, T 11,2 cm / Gewicht: 1.603 g
- Museum
- Grünes Gewölbe
- Inventory number
- IV 337