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Document Details : Title: Joannes Baptista Grondoni (1680-1738) Subtitle: Een Brusselse juwelier, kunsthandelaar en uitgever van ornamentprenten Author(s): NYS, Wim Journal: Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design Volume: 44 Date: 2022 Pages: 1-38 DOI: 10.2143/GBI.44.0.3291076 Abstract : Biographical repertories, collection catalogues of ornament prints and surveys of the history of jewellery often refer to Joannes Baptista Grondoni (1680-1738) as Italian or Genoese. However, recent biographical research revealed that this apothecary’s son was born and bred in Brussels. He can also be linked to the (de) Cachiopin, Goubau and Picquery families who were active in the jewellery industry in both Antwerp and Brussels. The facts that the Genoese painter Giovanni Battista Grondone was a contemporary and that the oldest known series of prints by Joannes Baptista Grondoni carries an Italian title may have added to the confusion. This article provides both a local and an international context to his two series of ornament prints, both published in Brussels, viz. the Principÿ per l’arte de gli orefeci (1709) and Aulæ Bavariæ Magnificentia (1715), the latter dedicated to the Elector Maximilian Emanuel of Bavaria. The focus here lies on his collaboration with respectively the designer Richard van Orley, the engravers Joannes Baptiste Berterham and Gillis de Backer, the bookseller Joseph t’Serstevens, the silversmith Peeter Schrijnmaeckers, and the diamond polisher Cornelis Franciscus Lambrechts, and the connection with the Livre Dorfeferie (1710) by the Brussels goldsmith’s apprentice Noë Pauwels along with the herald’s staff that he produced in the period 1715-1717. Furthermore, Grondoni combined the jewellery trade with the art trade, just like the Brussels court jeweller François Nicolas Lemmens. This essay represents a first attempt to link some jewels, often not hallmarked, with Grondoni’s published oeuvre. An important fact in this context is that for at least seventeen years his teacher and uncle Niklaas de Cachiopin sr (†1714) is known to have supplied from Brussels jewels and diamonds set in gold in the Spanish manner to a female merchant in Cadiz. Important from a technical, typological and stylistic viewpoint was the publication of series of instructive prints aimed at goldsmiths, silversmiths and jewellers. Paris played an significant role in this, but Nuremberg and Augsburg also had a major international impact as centres of production of goldsmith’s work and ornamental prints during the 17th and 18th centuries. Such prints were also published in Rome, Vienna, London, Amsterdam and Brussels in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, often with elements from earlier prints being copied at will. This makes it difficult to determine who owes what to whom. Publications and print series by David Baumann, Jean Bourguet, Briceau, Carlo Ciampoli, Daniel de Lafeuille, Johann Wilhelm Heel, Jean Quien and Wolfgang Hieronymus von Bömmel were potential sources of inspiration for or in competition with the work by Joannes Baptista Grondoni and Noë Pauwels. Preserved prints from the Principÿ per l’arte de gli orefeci and Aulæ Bavariæ Magnificentia have been used here to trace the different editions of these series. Combined with mentions in auction catalogues the provenance of these prints offers a first glimps of their status as collector’s items, objects of study or potential sources of inspiration. For example, the Antwerp silversmith Jan Pieter Antoon Verschuylen (1801-1865) possessed a copy of the Principÿ and we know that in the 18th century a certain (as yet unidentified) J:P: Mesurolle owned at least one print from the Aulæ Bavariæ. |
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