From the twelfth to the fifteenth century, a remarkable group of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic vessels for ceremonial hand washing were made in medieval Germany. Employed in the service of the Mass and at the noble table, aquamanilia ranged in shape from single animals such as dragons, lions, and peacocks to more complex compositions, including mounted knights and Samson fighting the lion. The appearance of these objects in Germany in the twelfth century is remarkable for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, they mark the resurgence of the technology for casting hollow metal objects in medieval Europe, a skill that had been dormant there since antiquity. The Islamic world, on the other hand, had maintained a tradition of casting zoomorphic vessels in copper alloys. The sudden emergence of aquamanilia in Europe at a time of expanded contact with Islamic lands clearly indicates artistic exchange between these different cultures.

This is one of the many important points made in a lucidly written and beautifully produced new catalogue, Lions, Dragons, and Other Beasts: Aquamanilia of the Middle Ages, Vessels for Church and Table, which accompanied a 2006 exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts. The catalogue’s principal authors are Peter Barnet, the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of Medieval Art and the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Pete Dandridge, conservator in the Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum. The catalogue is therefore not only a model of collaboration between two institutions, Bard and the Metropolitan, but also between two disciplines, art history and conservation.

Because it is the first serious study of aquamanilia in English, the catalogue is long overdue. Otto von Falke and Erich Meyer’s magisterial Romanische Leuchter und Gefässe, Giessgefässe der Gotik (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1935) has long been the primary reference for these objects. While there have been more recent publications on aquamanilia, these too have been by German scholars for German-speaking audiences (Peter Bloch, Aquamanilien: Mittelalterliche Bronzen für sakralen und profanen Gebrauch, Ghent: Weber, 1981; and Michael Hütt, Aquamanilien: Gebrauch und Form: “Quem lavat unda foris,” Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1993), a fact that is somewhat puzzling given the incomparably rich collection in the Metropolitan Museum and the outstanding examples on display at other museums in the United States and the United Kingdom (for example, see Lions, Dragons and Other Beasts, nos. 8 and 16).

In the first chapter, “Beasts of Every Land and Clime: an Introduction to Medieval Aquamanilia,” Barnet begins with an examination of hand washing in medieval liturgical drama. While the priest washed his hands prior to the celebration of the Eucharist, he would recite verses from the Psalms that related washing to the absolution of sins (4). Early medieval writers used the word aquamanile to denote the vessels used for priestly hand washing; references to these vessels in the shape of humans and animals, however, first appear in German inventories from the twelfth century. It was at just the same time that workshops in northern Germany and Lower Saxony began producing the wonderful zoomorphic creations that, according to a mid-thirteenth century list at Mainz, could take “any shape whatsoever” (5).

In the secular realm, these fanciful creatures were used at noble feasts and were even deemed as appropriate gifts from one member of European royalty to another. For instance, the French Queen Margaret gave the English King Henry III a basin “shaped liked a peacock” (7). But if a peacock-shaped vessel was appropriate on the table of a king, why would it also be appropriate for the altar of a church? This blurring of the boundaries between secular and sacred was apparently not problematic for medieval viewers, and Barnet is right to point out the pervasiveness of animal imagery in medieval society, as well as the myriad meanings ascribed to various members of the animal kingdom.

In fact, aquamanilia may have been deemed as suitable liturgical furnishings precisely because of their rich and seemingly exotic appearance. After all, a variety of secular luxury goods from the East—carved ivory boxes, rock crystal perfume flasks, silk textiles—were incorporated into church treasuries. While he is not the first to link the emergence of aquamanilia with foreign influences (Falke and Meyer credited Fatimid Egypt in particular, p. 38), Barnet provides a convincing argument about the impact that cultural exchange between medieval Europe and the Islamic world had on the development of aquamanilia. This point is also well illustrated by a final section of the catalogue, written by Leslie Bussis Tait, on “Related Objects,” which includes a diverse array of examples, including a late Roman or Byzantine oil jar in the shape of a bear (no. 31) and two Seljuq incense burners in the form of a bird and a lion (nos. 38 and 39).

The final section of Barnet’s introductory chapter considers the production of aquamanilia between 1200–1350 at workshops in northern Germany and Lower Saxony, particularly in Magdeburg and Hildesheim, which had long been recognized as artistic centers. Our knowledge of the production of works there, however, remains frustratingly incomplete in comparison to our knowledge of metalworkers and the practice of their craft in later Gothic Nuremberg, which is the subject of the next essay in the catalogue, written by Ursula Mende. By 1400, Nuremberg had eclipsed northern German locations in the production of aquamanilia. Early fifteenth-century master rolls indicate that there were some seventy-five rotschmiede, or craftsmen, in the city who specialized in cast copper alloy objects. They made everything from aquamanilia to door pulls to chandeliers (25). As Mende points out, by the late fifteenth century, it is doubtful that aquamanilia played any role in the liturgy. Instead, they would have blended tastefully with stylized animals on furniture, tiles, and even playing cards found in patrician homes. Nuremberg aquamanilia appear repeatedly in household inventories, even as far away as the Netherlands (33).

The next essay, Pete Dandridge’s “Exquisite Objects, Prodigious Techniques,” moves us from the historical context surrounding the creation of aquamanilia to the very specific details of their production. Repeatedly invoking medieval treatises such as Theophilus’s twelfth-century On Diverse Arts and Benvenuto Cellini’s sixteenth-century Goldsmithing and Sculpture, Dandridge gives a clear explanation for every step of the casting process. In many ways, this essay is itself an alchemical admixture of medieval sources and the most advanced scientific technology available to conservators today, including endoscopes, microscopes, X-radiography, and plasma-mass spectrometry. The result is golden, especially for the conservation layperson. Just as useful for non-specialized audiences is the supplementary forty-minute DVD tucked into the inside back cover, which was produced by Bard and written by Dandridge and Ubaldo Vitali, a practicing metalworker. It very clearly demonstrates the lost wax method of casting bronze and should therefore be of great use in the classroom. Dandridge’s essay is followed by a briefer one on the “Analysis of Core and Investment Samples from Some Aquamanilia” by Richard Newman of the Scientific Research Lab, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which will be of interest to more specialized readers.

The catalogue features twenty-six medieval aquamanilia in chronological sequence. The objects range from the slightly strange, such as the human bust from Boston with tiny, cartoon-like arms extending from its chest (no. 7), to the sublime, such as a later example of Samson and the Lion, also from Boston, with its complex composition and exceptionally rendered details (no. 16). All of the objects are reproduced in color, and often from several different angles. In addition to this, an x-radiograph image accompanies each entry, along with detailed shots of cast-in repairs and chisel and graver marks. From the commentary, we learn not only about the production of the objects, but also how they were used and appreciated throughout medieval Europe. For instance, one late twelfth-century lion-shaped aquamanile from a private collection (no. 2) bears a medieval Hebrew inscription indicating that it was used by a rabbi prior to his blessing of the congregation. Even more intriguing, the name of the donor, Beyrekh, suggests that it may have been used at a synagogue in France or England.

The catalogue ends with a discussion of four nineteenth-century aquamanilia. The analysis of these is particularly important, and Barnet and Dandridge are to be commended for including them—particularly in light of the modern aquamanilia that were produced innocently (or not) by bona fide companies (and forgers) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and which still appear on the market today. This troubling aspect of aquamanilia is only alluded to in the introduction (17), and I wish that the catalogue had included an in-depth history of the post-medieval market for these objects. All in all, however, it is hard to find fault with a book that combines such rigorous stylistic and technical analysis with a contextual framework that allows for a deeper understanding of these charming and multivalent objects.