The oliphant

The oliphant was formerly in the possession of the Spencer family in England. It is one of a small group of ivory hunting horns attributed by Bassani and Fagg to an anonymous ‘Master of the Arms of Castile and Aragon’ (fig 3) because these items are carved with the heraldic arms of Portugal and those of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon (together with the words Tanto monta, which formed part of Isabella and Ferdinand’s motto); their marriage in October 1469 united the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and laid the foundations of the modern Spanish state. It has come to be referred to (for example, on the NGA websiteFootnote ¹⁶) as the ‘Drumond Castle Oliphant’ for reasons which, as we shall see, do not bear close scrutiny.

Fig 3.

Afro-Portuguese oliphant by the Master of the Arms of Castile and Aragon, now in the NGA. Formerly in the possession of Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford; Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Lord Scarsdale; George Ashby; and the Spencer family. Acc. No. NGA 79.2148.A-B. Photograph: Courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia.

Spencer family tradition has it that their Afro-Portuguese hunting horn was given in 1802 to George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758–1834), by a George Ashby of Naseby, about whom nothing more was known. This was the information gleaned by the Portuguese scholar Mario de Sampayo Ribeiro for his Reference de Sampayo Ribeiro1964 article ‘O Olifante de Drumond-Castle’,Footnote ¹⁷ and it is duly repeated by Bassani and Fagg. There is, however, a source closer to the time of this transaction in an 1822 description of the library at Althorp, the Spencer family home: ‘To the left, on quitting [the library], is hung up a curious old hunting horn of ivory, of the execution of the xvith century, and of foreign workmanship, presented to his Lordship by George Ashby, Esq. of Haselbeach, in Northamptonshire.’Footnote ¹⁸ The apparent discrepancy between ‘George Ashby of Naseby’ and ‘George Ashby, Esq. of Haselbeach’ need not detain us: Naseby and Haselbeach (or Haselbech, as it is now generally written) are villages in Northamptonshire only a mile or so apart. What has escaped attention, however, is that George Ashby left a will, in which the gift to the 2nd Earl Spencer of his ivory hunting horn is explicitly recorded.

The reference to ‘Emblematical figures in Basso relievo’ is clearly a reference to the heraldic arms of Portugal and Spain mentioned above. The so-called ‘Tusk of the Walrus or Seahorse’ is actually an elephant tusk, but that is an easy mistake to make: they are very similar in shape and appearance. The new information is that before the horn came into Ashby’s possession it had previously belonged to Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Lord Scarsdale (1726–1804). Lord Scarsdale was a prominent Tory politician. He was also a patron of the arts and a collector who employed the architect Robert Adam FSA (1728–92) to rebuild his family home at Kedleston in Derbyshire in the grandiose Palladian style to house his collection of paintings and sculpture. The ivory horn was presumably part of this collection at some point, but the records of the collection are incomplete and, so far as one can discover, make no mention of an ivory hunting horn; nor do we know what the relations were between Lord Scarsdale and George Ashby and how Scarsdale came to give the horn to Ashby.

What is known is that earlier in the century what is almost certainly the same hunting horn belonged to the noted bibliophile and art collector Edward Harley (1689–1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, the son of Robert Harley (1661–1724), 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, Lord High Treasurer between 1711 and 1714. The evidence for this lies in the minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London for 21 March 1734.

The ‘Mr Vertue’ mentioned was George Vertue (1684–1756), a Fellow of the Society and its official engraver. In the 1720s and 1730s he carried out a series of commissioned drawings and engravings for the 2nd Earl of Oxford and sometimes acted as his art agent and travelling companion. The description of the earl’s ivory horn is detailed: it is carved with hunting figures, the arms of Spain and Portugal, the words ‘Ave Marya’ and ‘Tanto monta’, and the Cross of the Order of Christ [mis]identified as ‘the arms of Jerusalem’ – which unmistakably link it to Afro-Portuguese oliphants carved by the ‘Master of the Arms of Castile and Aragon’. Also, the dimensions of the horn exactly match those of the Curzon/Ashby/Spencer oliphant now in the NGA. It does not seem far-fetched, therefore, to conclude that they are one and the same; even if, for the moment, we cannot explain how the 2nd Earl of Oxford’s ivory horn later came to find its way into the possession of Lord Scarsdale.

This is perhaps the place to deal with the suggestion made in NGA’s publicity material that the horn could have been brought to England earlier by Philip ii of Spain (r. 1556–98) when he arrived to marry his second wife, Mary i of England, in 1554. We should couple that with a critical look at the name ‘Drumond Castle Oliphant’, which the NGA also uses when referring to the horn. The currency of that name seems to have originated in de Sampayo Ribeiro’s Reference de Sampayo Ribeiro1964 article ‘O Olifante de Drumond-Castle’. However, de Sampayo Ribeiro was drawing upon a book by an Englishman, Arthur James Hipkins, published seventy-six years earlier,Footnote ²¹ in which there is a fine illustration of the oliphant. Hipkins provided a brief account of the instrument on the page facing the illustration.Footnote ²² He noted that it belonged to the 2nd Earl Spencer and that it was assumed to be the work of West African carvers for the Portuguese. Hipkins speculated that the presence of the royal arms of Portugal and Spain might link the horn to the marriage, in 1543, of Philip ii of Spain to his first wife, Maria Manuela, daughter of John iii, King of Portugal, and that, following her death in 1545, Philip may have brought it to England in 1554 when he came to marry Mary Tudor. Then, significantly, Hipkins mentions Drummond [sic] Castle; but – and the point is worth stressing – only in the context of listing different uses of horns in general:

Hipkins does not say that the horn in Drummond Castle and Earl Spencer’s oliphant were one and the same. Drummond Castle (note the double ‘m’) is in Perthshire, Scotland. The Spencer family has never owned, nor had any association with, Drummond Castle. The castle was formerly, as the name implies, in the possession of the Drummonds, an ancient Scottish family. Following the dying out of the male line in the early nineteenth century, it passed through the female line to the family of Willoughby de Eresby. Lady Nancy Jane Marie Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, continues to live there to the present day.

The clear meaning of what Hipkins is saying here is that horns, such as Earl Spencer’s, were used for different purposes and that one of those purposes, exemplified by the (quite different) horn in Drummond Castle, was to call the household and guests to dinner. Confirmation of this is given in the work by ‘Mr McIntyre North’ (C N McIntyre North) to which Hipkins refers, Book of the Club of True Highlanders; this has a drawing of a ‘dinner horn, Drummond Castle’ (plate xxix).Footnote ²⁴ It is clearly not the Spencer oliphant, as it has no elaborate ornamentation, royal coats of arms or Latin mottoes; nor is it even ivory. However, it is described as ‘a natural [undecorated? Highland cattle?] horn’, which was used at Drummond Castle until the middle of the sixteenth century to signal the service of dinner to the inmates.Footnote ²⁵

The identification of the Spencer oliphant with the horn in Drummond Castle is thus based on a misreading of what Hipkins said. But whose misreading? Here one is inclined to exonerate de Sampayo Ribeiro. For his knowledge of Hipkins’ book was gained, he tells us, at second hand from Adalbert Svoboda’s work, Illustrierte Musikgeschichte. Svoboda reproduces Hipkins’ illustration of the oliphant and summarises his account of it as follows:

In other words, it was Svoboda who got the name of Drummond Castle wrong and misread Hipkins as saying that Earl Spencer’s oliphant and the horn in Drummond Castle were one and the same.

Finally, what evidence is there that the Spencer oliphant may have been brought to England by Philip ii of Spain? According to the NGA website,Footnote ²⁷ there was a ‘paper sticker’ apparently found inside the mouthpiece of the oliphant that refers to Philip’s marriage to Maria, daughter of the King of Portugal. The sticker is described as ‘very old and hardly legible’. But this piece of paper could hardly have been inside the mouthpiece in 1734 when the oliphant was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries of London, or its presence and what it said would surely have been alluded to. At best, therefore, the writing on the paper can only be the conjecture of some later eighteenth-century scholar about the horn’s origins. As such, it may have furnished Hipkins with the basis for the historical account in his book, but this hardly counts as primary evidence of its truth. Significantly, de Sampayo Ribeiro does not take up the suggestion that the horn’s ornamentation refers to this marriage between Philip ii of Spain and the Infanta Maria. Instead, he argues that the particular versions of the royal arms shown on the horn indicate that, if it did commemorate a marriage between the royal families of Portugal and Spain, it was most likely to be one of the two marriages between Manuel i of Portugal and the two daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella: Isabella of Aragon, in 1497; and Maria of Aragon, in 1500. Thus, that the oliphant should be dated to the closing years of the fifteenth century. This dating is now widely accepted, although, as some scholars have spotted, the version of the Portuguese royal arms carved on two of the horns indicates that Manuel was not yet king and so the arms must therefore relate to some link between the two royal houses before 1495. However, the point of substance here is that, if it were not Philip ii’s 1543 marriage that was being celebrated in the design of the horn but a much earlier treaty between Spain and Portugal, then there is no reason to suppose that Philip had anything to do with its arrival in England.

The saltcellar

The second work to be discussed is an Afro-Portuguese saltcellar that was formerly in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle, and which was first loaned and then sold by the Society to the British Museum. The piece had earlier formed part of the collections of George Allan of Darlington (1736–1800), who was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. It has several of what seem to be specifically Judaeo-Christian features: on the lid has been carved a female figure and child that may represent the Madonna with the baby Jesus; below them are three figures holding hands, possibly representing the three children in the fiery furnace;Footnote ²⁸ and on the base there is another kneeling figure (Daniel perhaps?) flanked by lions (fig 4). Attached to the saltcellar are the remains of a vellum label with three wax seals and words that are now illegible, but which, from a 1820s transcription, appear to be the names of those whose seals were attached and a partly obliterated Latin sentence.Footnote ²⁹

Fig 4.

Afro-Portuguese ivory saltcellar formerly in the collection of George Allan of Darlington and the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle. Note the figures of (most likely) Madonna and child on the lid and what may be the Three Holy Children in the fiery furnace from the Book of Daniel. British Museum inv. no. Af1981,35.1.a-b. Photograph: Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

It is this label that holds the key to the saltcellar’s history. In 1798, shortly before his death, Allan had a drawing made of the saltcellar by William Henry Wood for the Society of Antiquaries of London and the drawing survives to this day in the Society’s Library (fig 5). It is noted on the drawing that (fig 6): ‘At A the bottom of the Cup, a twisted Silken Cord is tied, (white, yellow blue & red) to which is appendant a vellum Label in the form below, with 3 small Seals thereon in red wax, but much defaced – The Inscription on the Label is also nearly obliterated.’ There is a sketch of the label itself with its three seals and the original writing, which appears to read: ‘Johannes y[?] Jehovah D Nicolaus Ulbasig [?] D Joannes Ernestus Schefflar D De Examine hujus poculi mereatur nostrum testimonium. 1520.’ It is further stated that within the cup was a paper: ‘Examined by James Parsons MD And[rew] Coltee Ducarel LLD And[rew] Gifford DD Aug. 17, 1755.’

Fig 5.

Drawing of the Afro-Portuguese ivory saltcellar (Ill. 4) commissioned in 1798 by George Allan from William Henry Wood for the Society of Antiquaries of London. SAL, Utensils and Furniture 10. Drawing: Courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Fig 6.

William Henry Wood’s 1798 drawing of the vellum label with three wax seals attached to George Allan’s Afro-Portuguese ivory saltcellar. It appears to record an examination of the saltcellar carried out in 1520 by three named savants. Also mentioned is a paper found within the bowl of the saltcellar commemorating a later examination of the saltcellar in 1755 by three named Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London. SAL, Utensils and Furniture 10. Drawing: Courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

First, the parchment label. The Latin text translates thus: ‘it is worth [having] our testimony of the examination of this cup.’ The label with its three wax seals – presumably of the three persons named – would seem to be the testimony referred to, and 1520 the year in which the examination took place. The date is worth noting. Although there are references to ivory saltcellars, horns and spoons in the Portuguese customs records of 1504–5,Footnote ³⁰ and there is iconographic evidence in the coats of arms and mottoes carved on individual Afro-Portuguese saltcellars and horns that points to their having been made between 1490 and 1540,Footnote ³¹ the year 1520 is the earliest date we have for the presence in Europe of any particular Afro-Portuguese ivory – preceding the records of the Afro-Portuguese ivory spoons in the possession of the Medici family in Florence by some forty years. The identity of the savants who examined the saltcellar has still to be determined, but their names (see above) sound German and suggest that the examination took place in a part of German-speaking central Europe. What is more, the ‘D’ after the names, which might reasonably be assumed to be an abbreviation of ‘Doctor’, can also be used to mean ‘Dantiscanus’ or ‘citizen of Danzig’, formerly a German-speaking Hanseatic port on the Baltic (now the Polish city of Gdansk).Footnote ³²

There is not the same difficulty in identifying the persons who carried out the second examination of the saltcellar in August 1755. James Parsons, Andrew Coltee Ducarel and Andrew Gifford were all prominent Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London, but there is nothing in the minutes of the Society for 1755 to suggest that the examination took place at one of its meetings or under its auspices. Hence, it must have been a private consultation. Since, like their predecessors, they simply recorded their names and the date, we do not know what conclusions, if any, they came to about the saltcellar. Nor do we know in whose possession the saltcellar was at this time.

The owner was perhaps Richard Bateman. In 1774 ‘Mr Christie’ auctioned the contents of Bateman’s museum in Windsor and they included ‘[Lot] 74. An ivory chalice antique carving authenticated in 1520 as being then very ancient’, which must, one would think, be a description of the Allan saltcellar.Footnote ³³ One saw in the case of Rawlinson that it was natural for antiquarians at this time, with their medievalist mind-set, to suppose that Afro-Portuguese saltcellars were chalices or communion vessels from that earlier period of English history. Bateman himself, under the influence of Horace Walpole, had converted his house at Windsor into a beacon of the Gothic Revival and filled it with medieval (or rather, what were thought to be medieval) antiques. It would be an extraordinary coincidence if a second object fitting the description of an ‘ivory chalice’ had been ‘authenticated in 1520 as being then very ancient’ and it not refer to the label on the Allan saltcellar certifying that it had been examined by the three German savants in that year.

However, there is a further, surely clinching, piece of evidence. The preceding item in the Bateman auction, Lot 73, was ‘a crozier of Seabrook Abbot of Gloucester 1457, taken out of his coffin’. There is a crozier formerly in the Allan collection that has inscribed on the staff: ‘This crozier was found 1741, in the coffin of Thomas Seabrook, chosen Abbot of Gloucester in 1450. He died in 1457. It was given to the Abbey of Old Windsor [Bateman’s home where he had his museum] by Dr Milles, Dean of Exeter, in 1764.’ In other words, Allan’s collection contained at least one object purchased at the auction of Richard Bateman’s museum in Reference Bateman1774. That is powerful, albeit circumstantial, evidence that Allan’s Afro-Portuguese saltcellar – which, as we have seen, fits perfectly the description of the ‘ivory chalice’ that was the very next item in that sale – was purchased at the same time. At the same time, but not necessarily by George Allan himself. For Allan acquired the collections of another northern antiquarian and naturalist, Marmaduke Tunstall, at the latter’s death in 1791; J D Cowen, quite independently, has argued that it was probably Tunstall – a Yorkshireman, but at that time living in the south – who bought Abbot Seabrook’s crozier at the auction of Bateman’s museum in Reference Bateman1774.Footnote ³⁴ If that is so, then it was probably also Tunstall who bid for the ‘ivory chalice’, and Allan acquired it with the rest of Tunstall’s collections in 1791.