Southern Netherlands
Overall: 17.6 x 4.9 x 2.6 cm (6 15/16 x 1 15/16 x 1 in.)
Painted enamel and gilding on silver

Classification: Enamels

On view in the: Catalonian Chapel, in honor of I. W. Colburn (European Art before 1400)

On the bowl of this spoon, a fox dressed as a monk and carrying three dead geese in his cowl holds a document bearing the word “pax” (peace). He is preaching to a flock of geese, while another fox seizes one of the congregation. The perceived hypocrisy of the clergy was frequently mocked in the late Middle Ages, and the inspiration for the decoration of this spoon may have been a well-known proverb, “When the fox preaches beware your geese.” Or the scene may be drawn from a Flemish version of the immensely popular Roman de Renart, a collection of stories (featuring Renart the fox) in which animals live in a society modeled on that of medieval France. The spoon is one of a group of luxury objects that are believed to have been made for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, a great patron of the arts who amassed large collections of tapestries, paintings, metalwork, illustrated books, and jewels.

The silver spoon is composed of several pieces: a painted enamel bowl with an applied gilded silver edge and central strip on the back; a cast lion head joining the stem and the bowl; a silver stem wound with a gilded silver band to create a spiral field for enamel; and a gilded silver floral finial cast in two pieces. The figures in grisaille and the triangular treetops and rain in gold are painted over a lapis-blue enamel ground. The stem has traces of green and blue enamel. The fig-shaped bowl appearing to emanate from the mouth of the lion shows, on the inside, a fox standing in a pulpit and wrapped in a monk's habit with three dead geese, whose heads emanate from the cowl. The fox preaches from a charter with a dangling seal (on which only the word "pax" is legible) to a flock of geese who stand on a hillside. Another fox, seated below the pulpit, seizes one of the congregants. Above a fleeing goose is a scroll with an undecipherable inscription. At the top of the scene, on both the front and the back sides of the bowl, golden rain and rays emanate from a small cloud. The back side shows a dense forest of trees on hilly ground.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Helen and Alice Colburn Fund, 1951
Accession number: 51.2472

Provenance/Ownership History: Please note: The history of ownership is not definitive or comprehensive, as it is under constant review and revision by MFA curators and researchers.

About 1430, possibly part of a table service made for Philip the Good (b. 1396 - d. 1467), 3rd Valois Duke of Burgundy (r. 1419-1467), Dijon and Bruges (original commission?) [see note 1]. Princes of Anhalt, Dessau, Germany. 1927, with A.S. Drey, Munich [see note 2]. By 1931, Baron Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (b. 1843 - d. 1940), Frankfurt [see note 3]; possibly sold by Goldschmidt-Rothschild or his heirs to Rosenberg and Stiebel, New York [see note 4]; 1951, sold by Rosenberg and Stiebel to the MFA for $2250. (Accession Date: November 8, 1951)

NOTES:
[1] Philip the Good adopted the colors (black, gray, and white) of this spoon and other, similar enamels after the death of his father, John the Fearless, in 1419. The objects may have belonged to the same table set. For further information, see Hanns Swarzenski and Nancy Netzer, "Catalogue of Medieval Objects: Enamels and Glass" (Boston: MFA, 1986), pp.122-124, cat. no. 43. [2] Phillipe Verdier, "A Medallion of the 'Ara Coeli' and the Netherlandish Enamels of the Fifteenth Centuries," Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 19-20 (1956-1957), p. 30, n. 69. [3] Heinrich Kohlhaussen, "Niederländisch Schmelzwerk," Jahrbuch der preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 52 (1931), p. 154, n. 3, recorded it as already in the Goldschmidt-Rothschild collection. [4] Members of the Rothschild family consigned many objects to Rosenberg and Stiebel in the 1940s and 1950s.

This object is included in the following Selected Tour(s):

• European Decorative Arts and Sculpture
• Art of Europe Highlights
• Highlights of European Decorative Arts & Sculpture