bavarikon4UDescription
This pen-and-ink drawing in grey and black ink and green, brown and grey wash is one of the numerous design drawings for furniture, borders and tableware in the Erlangen collection. What is disputed, however, is what the drawing, probably created around 1540, is actually supposed to depict. A three-step stone platform with a stairway leads to an elongated fountain basin into which water can be poured through lion-headed gargoyles. A high tower rises in the middle of the basin, the interior of which is accessible from the edge of the basin over a wide footbridge. Originally, it was assumed that this design could be one of the table fountains so popular in Nuremberg. This attribution cannot be completely dismissed, as table fountains with a castle-like structure are known from this period, but given the monumentality of the fountain, it could also be a garden fountain.
For a long time this sheet was considered to be the work of an imitator of Peter Flötner (died 1546), one of the most important Nuremberg artists of the first half of the 16th century. According to the latest research, this sheet can now, with certain reservations, be assigned to Peter Flötner’s wider circle.