Gustavus Adolphus Commemorative Vessel
From January 14 to February 25, 1990, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens presented Three Centuries of Pewter from the Adler Collection.1 To promote the exhibition, the newsletter featured a photograph of Herta and Justin H. Adler standing on the staircase in the foyer of the Dixon Residence holding the Gustavus Adolphus Commemorative Vessel. The Adlers’ decision to highlight this exemplary piece from their extensive collection bespeaks the object’s bold size, complexity, and rarity.
1The exhibition was organized by and shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida in 1989 and then traveled to the Dixon the following year. The director of the Museum of Fine Arts at the time, Michael Milkovich, had been curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and then founding director of the Dixon, and knew Herta and Justin Adler from his time in Memphis. Three Centuries of Pewter from the Adler Collection comprised only a portion of the Adler’s extensive collection, much of which was given to the Dixon in 1991 and has been on permanent view since its installation in the Winegardner Auditorium in 1993.
This elaborate vessel features eagle-head handles, a linked chain, a sculptural finial on the lid portraying a seventeenth-century foot soldier with a pike, and two large, engraved panels depicting Gustavus II Adolphus (1594 – 1632), king of Sweden from 1611 to 1632. He is remembered for his significant role in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a complex Central European conflict that was, at first, a localized war of religion between Protestant German princes and the Catholic Hapsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire but then spread more broadly after the intervention of Sweden and France. The Lutheran Gustavus Adolphus came to the aid of Protestant forces in Germany, fighting major battles in Breitenfeld and Lützen in Saxony, and Rain am Lech in Bavaria. Modern scholars estimate that between 4.5 and 8 million people died during the span of this war, including Gustavus Adolphus himself, who was killed in battle at Lützen in 1632.
The depiction of the king on the front of this vessel is closely related to an engraved portrait by Lucas Kilian of Augsburg (1579 – 1637) from 1632. The Latin phrase seen above the portrait is a shortened version of Gustavus Adolphus’s personal motto “Cum Deo et victricibus armis” or “With God and Victorious Arms.” The king is identified at the bottom edge of the image, “GVST٠ADOLPHVS/D. G. REX SVEC GOTH” or “Gustavus Adolphus/By the Grace of God King of the Swedes and the Goths.”
On the reverse is a complex scene apparently depicting Gustavus Adolphus leading a landing party of soldiers in a small boat with a larger masted ship anchored in the background. Although the scene is labeled “GEL ٠ DEN 4 JVL 1632,” the specific event represented here has yet to be conclusively identified. The letters “GEL” may be an abbreviation for the German word “Gelände” or “land/terrain” while the date, July 4, 1632, seems to set the action during the king’s Bavarian campaign, possibly in the city of Nuremburg where Gustavus Adolphus and his army had spent much of the spring and returned again during July before engaging in the Battle of Alte Veste near the city in September.
Touchmarks on the neck of the vessel are as yet unidentified. However, crossed keys in a shield combined with the image of a footed pitcher are known to have been used by pewter smiths in Regensburg, Germany, a city whose coat of arms also features two crossed keys in a shield.2
2 For example, entry on Paulus Pöllinger in Erwin Hintze, Die Deutschen Zinngiesser und Ihre Marken, Band VI: Sūddeutsche Zinngiesser, Teil II: Kūnzelsau/Sulzbach (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1928), pp. 124-125, http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/hintze1928bd6/0009.
Objects commemorating Gustavus Adolphus, the so-called “Lion of the North,” may be found in many public and private collections, including an elaborate silver-gilt cup with a sculptural portrait finial of the king in the British Museum. The Dixon’s Adler Pewter Collection also includes a second example; a large charger engraved in the center with decorative foliage surrounding a shield marked 1632, the only indication that this plate recalls the death of the Swedish king.
