all repoussé and including: the Annunciation with maker and town mark in the center of the floor tiles, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, the Crucifixion, the Deposition and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, now set within a Rococo style carved wood frame.

RELATED LITERATURE
I. Weber, Deutsche, Niederländische und Französische Renaissanceplaketten 1500-1650, Munich, 1975.

A. Norris and I. Weber, Medals and Plaquettes from the Molinari Collection at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, 1976, fig.384a, pp.111-112.

H. Seling, Die Kunst der Augsburger Goldschmiede 1529-1868, vol. III, no. 752, p. 64, Munich, 1980.

Baumstark and Seling(eds.), Silber und Gold, Augsburger Goldschmiedekunst für die Höfe Europas, Munich, 1994.

 

Another version of the the Annunciation composition is in the Molinari Collection at Bowdoin College (Norris/Weber,op.cit.), although that example is in bronze and is rather soft and probably a later cast. The bronze has illegibl🌸e impressions of the marks seen on the silver plaque, which is why the authors only attributed the bronze to the circle of Matthias Walbaum(1554-1632).

Baumstark and Seling (op.cit., p.VII, no.274, cat.12 and p.III) illustrate the marks of Sylvester II Eberlin, a member of a prominent Augsburg silversmith family, on an automaton with the Triumph of Bacchus in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. However, the town marks are slightly different, indicating that the automaton was probably made ear🌺lier than the present plaque of the Annunciation.

The other silver plaquettes in the present lot appear to come from a different series, evident from both subject-matter and treatment of some details and degree of relief. All of the silver would have most likely been incorporated into a table cabinet of the type particularly popular in the 17th century in Augsburg and Antwerp. These cabinets were embellished with a variety of materials such as ebony, ivory, silver and gold and were often also fitted&nb💝sp;with paintings. To find unmarked silver mounts on a sophisticated object from this period is not unusual.