This bell, from the sixteenth-century Paduan workshop of Vincenzo Grandi and his nephew Gian Girolamo Grandi, is one of the most accomplished examples of its kind. Wilhelm von Bode, among the most influential scholars and connoisseurs of modern art history, believed this to be the finest bell of the Renaissance. To produce a pleasing tone, a bell, whether belfry-size or small like this, must be cast flawlessly. While too many decorative details can spoil the sound, this bell is covered with bold reliefs, a testimony to the skill of its caster. Winged children dance around its base. Growing at the top are spiky acanthus leaves. In between the children are images of seven bound rods above a bunch of fruit and leaves. This is an impresa, or emblem, of the cardinal-prince of Trent, Bernard Cles, suggesting that the bell was cast for him.
The handle at the top is a naked child holding a grapevine in his left hand, mirroring the festive mood of the dancing putti below. When the owner turned the bell around, however, he would see that the child perches on a skull. This sobering detail, called a memento mori, was a reminder that death is never far away.
Hand Bell
Like Riccio, who made lamps, candlesticks, and inkstands for his educated clients, the Grandi family workshop too supplied their connoisseur patrons with decorative bronze objects, such as buckets, bells, and doorknockers. The bells were especially in demand, and a number of them are related in design to the Frick example, which is considered the most refined and imaginative of this group. Not surprisingly, it was once attributed to Riccio.
The body of the hand bell is decorated with lively motifs, including pairs of putti flanking unidentified coats of arms in cartouches, leaves, masks, bunches of fruit, scrolls, and ribbons, all disposed in a crisp, lacy pattern over the surface. The handle of the bell is in the form of a seated infant who holds in his left hand the stem of a grapevine which curls down over his leg. At his feet are two small bunches of grapes, and he may once have held aloft another in his now-empty right hand. Seen from the front, this putto appears to be a hedonistic bacchanalian figure, reminiscent of many a tipsy Dionysus seated on a wine keg. But if one turns the bell around, the image is transformed into a memento mori, for the putto is seated not on a keg but on a human skull. The iconographic motif of a child with a skull was familiar and popular in the Renaissance. It was intended to remind the viewer that the span of life from infancy to death is nothing compared to eternity.
Such a subject would be particularly appropriate to a bell because hand bells were associated with the office of the priest and were rung during the Mass at the Sanctus to announce the advent of Christ in the Eucharist. The grapes on the bell refer then to the Eucharistic wine and the blood of Christ, who offers salvation and eternity following the death represented by the skull. The unknown prelate for whom Grandi made this intricately designed hand bell must have been a cultivated man of subtle tastes.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Durlacher. J. Pierpont Morgan, London and New York, 1909. Duveen. Frick, 1916.
Source: Sculpture in The Frick Collection: Italian. Volume III. New York: The Frick Collection, 1970.
