Aldobrandini Tazze

More recent scholarship by Julia Siemon indicates they were made in the southern Netherlands, possibly for a Habsburg patron, perhaps Archduke Albert VII of Austria, towards the end of the 16th century, and then acquired by a member of the Aldobrandini family before 1603.

[3] The 12 tazze were reunited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 2014, at the start of a major research project.

This endeavor resulted in an exhibition organized by Siemon, The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery, which was accompanied by a volume of essays by the same title.

The form is based on the kylix, a broad shallow wine-drinking cup from Ancient Greece, also the source of the word "chalice".

Chased classical columns separate the space into four panels, each showing a scene taken from the life of the relevant Roman emperor: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, or Domitian.

In many cases, the arms are marked on the underside of the bowl, suggesting the set was not commissioned by the Aldobrandini family but acquired later.

It seems that the complete set came into the ownership of Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini the Younger (1592–1638), and they were included in an inventory made in 1638, after his death.

The tazze passed to Ippolito the Younger's niece Olimpia Aldobrandini (1623–1682), who was married first to Paolo Borghese (1622–1646) in 1638 and then to Camillo Pamphilj (1622–1666) in 1647.

The tazze were inherited by her son Giovanni Battista Pamphilij [it] (1648–1709), and are included in an inventory made in 1710, when they were held in the Guardaroba Aldobrandini in the Palazzo del Corso.

[11] Attributed to Benvenuto Cellini, the set was sold for 1,000 guineas by the London auctioneer George Robins in February 1834.

These casts were in a private collection in the UK in the 1970s, and offered for sale at Christie's in 1976 by the estate of the Arthur Gore, 6th Earl of Arran.

The six tazze that remained in Spitzer's collection (Julius Caesar, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian) until his death were sold in Paris in 1893.

[14] According to Hayward, the replacement feet and stems may have been removed from contemporary 16th-century Spanish monstrances or reliquaries and attached to the tazze by Spitzer to increase their market appeal and price.

[1] Five were acquired by the Frankfurt art dealer Jakob Goldschmidt, but the Julius Caesar tazza was sold separately.