Auricular style

The style was especially important and effective in silversmithing, but was also used in minor architectural ornamentation such as door and window reveals, picture frames, and a wide variety of the decorative arts.

[2] It is often associated with stylized marine animal forms, or ambiguous masks and shapes that might be such, which seem to emerge from the rippling, fluid background, as if the silver remained in its molten state.

[3] Although precedents have been traced in the graphic designs of Italian Mannerist artists such as Giulio Romano and Enea Vico,[4] the auricular style can first be found in 1598 in the important ornament book of Northern Mannerism, Architectura: Von Außtheilung, Symmetria und Proportion der Fünff Seulen ..., by Wendel Dietterlin of Stuttgart, in the second edition of 1598.

[6] A bratina or Russian toasting-cup in the Walters Art Museum was made in Russia in 1650–70 in an auricular style that was presumably copied from pieces brought in by Dutch traders, perhaps as gifts to ease trade deals.

Most of the key works are in the Netherlands, especially the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, whose collection includes ewer and basin sets by Paul van Vianen (1613, with Diana and Callisto) and Johannes Lutma (1647).

[18] Around the mid-century, Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici had his large picture collection, housed in the Pitti Palace in Florence, reframed in the auricular style,[19] perhaps influenced by Stefano della Bella.