# The Aldobrandini Tazze > Unrecorded goldsmiths, probably working in the Habsburg Netherlands - c. 1587-1599 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unrecorded-goldsmiths-silver-caesars/aldobrandini-tazze/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-11 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded goldsmiths, probably working in the Habsburg Netherlands - **Date:** c. 1587-1599 - **Medium:** Silver, chased in relief and cast, gilded in the nineteenth century - **Dimensions:** Between 38.5 and 45 cm high as now assembled; individual weights between 2,701 and 2,982 grams, except the wholly replaced Titus tazza at 3,313.8 g and the Titus dish alone at 1,060.7 g - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** Northern European, late sixteenth century - **Current location:** Dispersed across seven countries. Two are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the others are in Madrid, London, Lisbon (two), Toronto, Minneapolis and four private collections. - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary Twelve silver standing cups, each carrying a statuette of one of the Twelve Caesars above a dish chased with four scenes from that emperor's life. Forty-eight scenes, each traceable to a specific passage of Suetonius. They were made in the 1590s, probably in the Habsburg Netherlands, by goldsmiths whose names are not known, and they are the most important surviving set of Renaissance silver.They were broken up in the mid-nineteenth century. Because the emperors unscrew from the dishes, and because each statuette carries its own name incised on its pedestal while the dishes do not, the figures got put back on the wrong dishes. By the end of the nineteenth century only two tazze of the twelve were correctly assembled. Most are still wrong today. Mary Beard noticed the problem at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where the Domitian statuette stands over a dish about Tiberius.In June 2014 all twelve were brought together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, correctly reassembled for the first time in more than a century, photographed and scientifically tested, and then taken apart again and sent home. The reconstruction is a book, not an object. Since that reunion, three of the four privately held pieces have themselves moved: the Vespasian tazza sold at Sotheby's in 2013 and is now identifiable as the Al Thani Collection; the Nero-Augustus tazza left the Zilkha Collection in a private sale in early 2025 after its owner's death; and the Caligula-Galba tazza went on public loan to a new gallery in Bath in September 2025. The set stays exactly as scattered as it was in 1893. Only the addresses keep changing. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1587-99-1599** Unknown; possibly the Archduke Albert of Austria `[disputed]` (origin) No record of the commission has been found. Julia Siemon proposes manufacture in the Habsburg Netherlands in the 1590s, possibly with the Austrian archdukes in view, and that Archduke Albert brought the set to Ferrara in autumn 1598 for his wedding to Isabella Clara Eugenia. Three letters of 1599 from the agent de' Cervi record the tazze being offered to the Duke of Mantua, who declined, and establish that the Este of Ferrara never owned them. No later publication revises this or names a maker. - **1602-1621** Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (1571-1621), Rome `[documented]` (purchase) Documents in the cardinal's accounts, found by Stefanie Walker, register payment on 26 March 1602 for SIX tazze bought by his agents in Milan. All twelve appear in his silver inventory of 1603, also found by Walker; his accounts contain no record of buying the other six. He is the source of the set's name and was not its patron. - **1621-1769** The cardinal's sister and her descendants: Borghese, Pamphilj and Doria Pamphilj `[documented]` (inheritance) Bequeathed by the cardinal to his sister and thereafter part of a family legacy passing among her descendants. The last record of the set in Italy is a document of 1769 marking the return of ownership to the Borghese family. - **1769-1826** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) Undocumented for fifty-seven years. The set was most likely sold out of Italy before 1792. Salomon notes that in the late eighteenth century most noble silver collections in Rome were destroyed by papal and Napoleonic campaigns to reclaim precious metal, so export is probably what saved it. - **1826-1861** The London trade, then Charles Scarisbrick of Scarisbrick Hall, Lancashire `[documented]` (sale) The tazze reappear in 1826 in the shop of a London dealer and silversmith. No reference to them has been found in the Scarisbrick archives, so the date he acquired them and the way he displayed them are unknown. Between 1862 and 1872 the set was gilded; electrotype copies of the dishes and bronze copies of the figures were made in the same period. - **1861-1893** Richard Attenborough, London, then Frederic Spitzer, Paris, and others `[documented]` (dispersal) Bought at the Scarisbrick sale at Christie's in 1861 by Richard Attenborough, a London dealer who was also a pawnbroker, goldsmith, silversmith, diamond and pearl merchant and appraiser. He lent two to the loan exhibition at the South Kensington Museum in 1862. Six passed to the Paris dealer Frederic Spitzer, who replaced their fluted feet with elaborate substitutes; a photograph of about 1890 shows two of them in his study. Three of Spitzer's six were mismatched when sold in 1893. The forty-nine-page manuscript describing the scenes has been missing since that year. - **1893-present** Dispersed across public and private collections in seven countries `[documented]` (dispersal) Present holders, re-checked August 2026: Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid (Julius Caesar); Victoria and Albert Museum, London, M.247-1956, Hildburgh Bequest 1956 (Domitian on Tiberius dish); Casa-Museu Medeiros e Almeida, Lisbon, FMA 1182 (Galba on Caligula dish); Metropolitan Museum of Art 2024.436 (Claudius) and 45.60.58a-h (Vitellius, Fletcher Fund 1945); private collection on loan to the Metropolitan, L.1999.62.2 (Tiberius on Nero dish); Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 997.158.151, from Viscount and Viscountess Lee of Fareham, given in trust by the Massey Foundation (Otho); Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, 1018 Our (Titus dish alone); Minneapolis Institute of Art, 75.54 (Augustus on Domitian dish); and the wholly nineteenth-century composite Titus in a private collection not further traced. Three holders have changed status since this record was first drafted and are detailed in the entries below: the Vespasian tazza (now identifiable as the Al Thani Collection, London), the Nero figure on the Augustus dish (no longer in the Zilkha Collection), and the Caligula figure on the Galba dish (now on public loan from the Schroder family estate). - **1982-2013** Vespasian tazza: descent from the Morgan Collection sale to the Al Thani Collection, London `[documented]` (sale) Sold at Christie's New York, 26 October 1982, lot 68 of the Morgan Collection, estimate 400,000-800,000 USD (price not distinguished as hammer or premium in the source consulted). Sold again at Sotheby's New York, Masterworks sale, 1 February 2013, lot 10, 'The Morgan Aldobrandini Tazza: Vespasian', for 1,426,500 USD against the same 400,000-800,000 USD estimate; the source gives this as the price achieved and does not itemise hammer separately. The piece was lent as 'The Al Thani Collection' to the 2017-18 Met/Waddesdon exhibition; whether that collection was the 2013 buyer or a later acquirer is not established in the sources consulted. - **2000-2025** Nero figure on the Augustus dish: Selim and Mary Zilkha, Los Angeles, then withdrawn to a private sale `[documented]` (sale) Bought from the Wernher collection in 2000 for 1 million pounds. Selim Zilkha died 16 September 2022. Christie's catalogued the tazza as the top lot of 'Global Treasury: The Life and Collection of Selim & Mary Zilkha', New York, 6 February 2025, estimate 2,000,000-3,000,000 USD, but the Italian trade press reported it sold privately ahead of the auction, with neither buyer nor price disclosed. The overall Zilkha sale realised about 6.63 million USD on an 82 per cent sell-through rate for the lots that did go under the hammer. - **2019-present** Caligula figure on the Galba dish: the estate of Bruno Schroder, on loan to the Holburne Museum, Bath `[documented]` (loan) Bruno Schroder, the banker whose family collection includes this piece, died 20 February 2019; ownership remains with his estate, now administered by his daughter Leonie Schroder and family. On 11 September 2025 the Holburne Museum opened a new, purpose-built Schroder Gallery, and the family's Renaissance silver, including this tazza, went on long-term loan and public display there for the first time as a complete group. Previously described only as 'the Schroder Collection, London'; the piece is now on public view in Bath, still under the family's ownership. - **2014-2018** Reunited on loan, not in ownership `[documented]` (exhibition) All twelve brought to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 18-19 June 2014 for a symposium, a photographic campaign and scientific testing, and correctly reassembled for the first time in over a century - temporarily. Shown at the Metropolitan Museum 12 December 2017 to 11 March 2018 and at Waddesdon Manor 18 April to 21 July 2018. The components went home in the configurations they arrived in. No further reunion, in whole or in part, has been found since 2018. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - Read the rows below as prices for INDIVIDUAL tazze at different dates, not as a price series for one object and not as a value for the set. Between the first and the last, the set was gilded, six feet were replaced by a forger, and the emperors were shuffled on to the wrong dishes. - **1861-05-15** Christie's, London, The posthumous sale of Charles Scarisbrick of Scarisbrick Hall, lot 159 - Estimate: Not recorded - Hammer: GBP 1,280 - UNCHANGED, and deliberately so. See the note. - With premium: None. Christie's charged no buyer's premium in 1861; the buyer's premium was introduced in 1975. - Sotheby's own provenance traces this single tazza through 'Charles Scarisbrick, Scarisbrick Hall, Lancashire; his posthumous sale Christie's, London, May 15, 1861, lot 159, as attributed to Benvenuto Cellini; sold to Richard Attenborough of the Strand.' This record's own source, the Metropolitan Museum's 2017 catalogue, describes the same sale and the same buyer but as the sale of the whole tazza set together for GBP 1,280 - and the two accounts cannot both describe lot 159 unless the entire set was sold as that one lot. Whether the set was in fact dispersed across several lots that day, or the GBP 1,280 is a set price attached here to a single lot number, is unresolved: settling it needs the printed Christie's catalogue of 15 May 1861 or the Metropolitan's own footnote, neither of which has been read. The date and lot number are added here because both sources agree on the sale itself; the hammer price is left as it already stood. - **1982-10-26** Christie's, New York, The Morgan Collection, lot 68 - Estimate: Not established for this sale. - Hammer: Not distinguished in the source consulted - With premium: Not distinguished in the source consulted - Sotheby's provenance for this exact tazza gives 'Christie's, New York, October 26, 1982, The Morgan Collection, lot 68', which fills the date and the lot number. It does NOT support the estimate on this row. The record currently reads 'USD 400,000-800,000 (Vespasian; the Morgan Collection sale estimate)' - but 400,000-800,000 is the estimate Sotheby's printed for the SAME OBJECT in 2013, and it is on the 2013 row of this record as well. One number, two rows, thirty-one years apart, and only the later one has a source. This is the transposition failure mode this desk has now found on four records: the arithmetic never looks wrong, because nothing is being added up. The reported 231,000 US dollars for 1982 is left exactly as it stands, still undistinguished between hammer and premium, because nothing read today separates them. - **2000** Not stated in the source consulted, - Estimate: Not stated - Hammer: Not distinguished in the source - With premium: Not distinguished in the source - The Wernher collection sale. The Nero figure on the Augustus dish is reported to have made 1 million pounds. Again the source does not distinguish hammer from premium. The object is a mismatched pairing and was sold as one. - **2013-02-01** Sotheby's, New York, Masterworks, sale N08964, lot 10 - Estimate: USD 400,000 - 800,000 - Hammer: Not published. Sotheby's publishes a price achieved and no hammer, and the result panel on this lot page reads 'Log in to view results'. No hammer derived. - With premium: USD 1,426,500 reported as the price achieved, i.e. premium-inclusive. NOT read from the house: the figure comes from the Enfilade sale report already cited on this record. The house's own figure is behind a login this desk does not cross. - The lot page was fetched in full at rung 1 on 2026-09-05 (HTTP 200) and read, not summarised. It carries the estimate 400,000 - 800,000 USD, the title 'The Morgan Aldobrandini Tazza: Vespasian. An Important Italian Renaissance silver-gilt tazza, circa 1560-80, the foot later', the height 15 1/4 in. / 38.5 cm, the engraved pedestal VESPASIANUS, and the literal string 'Log in to view results' where the figure would be. THE ESTIMATE IS THE POINT OF THIS CORRECTION: the same 400,000 - 800,000 currently sits on the 1982 row of this record as well, described there as the Morgan Collection sale estimate. It is evidenced for 2013 and unevidenced for 1982. See the 1982 correction below. - **2025-02-06** Christie's, New York, Global Treasury: The Life and Collection of Selim & Mary Zilkha, sale 23721, lot Not confirmed. - Estimate: USD 2,000,000 - 3,000,000 - Hammer: No sale at auction; sold privately ahead of the sale. - With premium: No sale at auction; sold privately ahead of the sale. Buyer and price not public. - Christie's own auction-results data for this sale, read at rung 1 on 2026-09-05, gives sale number 23721, New York, 6 February 2025, and a published sale total of USD 6,626,592. The tazza APPEARS NOWHERE in the results listing of 172 lots, which is the house's own confirmation of the record's existing claim that it never reached the block. Two further things came out of the same data and both are worth keeping. FIRST, the record's source 10, Il Giornale dell'Arte, says 82 per cent of the Zilkha works sold; 141 of the 172 lots in Christie's own listing carry a price realised, which is 82.0 per cent, so a press percentage is now corroborated from the house's data rather than repeated. SECOND, the individual price_realised values sum to exactly USD 6,626,592, the published sale total - so a Christie's sale total is the arithmetic sum of premium-inclusive lot prices, which is a reusable check for any Christie's figure on this site. AND THE THING NOT TO DO: lot 14 is the only number missing from the otherwise unbroken run 1 to 173 in that listing, which is consistent with a withdrawn lot and is very probably this tazza. IT IS NOT CONFIRMED BY ANY SOURCE and it must not be written into the lot field on that inference alone. Apollo Magazine's account of the collection, read in full today, names the piece as 'A silver-gilt Aldobrandini tazza (figure of Nero, dish of Augustus)' and dates it 1587-99, independently confirming the Nero-on-the-Augustus-dish mismatch the record already carries, but gives no lot number either. - **1834-02-03** George Robins, London, The sale of the retail goldsmith Thomas Hamlet, Princes Street, London, lot Not given in the source - Estimate: Not published - Hammer: 1,000 guineas - With premium: None. No buyer's premium was charged in London in 1834. - Sold as by Benvenuto Cellini, to Emanuel, probably Emanuel Brothers of Bevis Marks, St Mary Axe, London. From Sotheby's own provenance chain for the Vespasian tazza. 1,000 guineas is GBP 1,050 at 21 shillings to the guinea; the guinea figure is kept because that is what the source states, and the conversion is arithmetic, not a second source. This row matters to the record's own argument: it is twenty-seven years before the 1861 Scarisbrick sale and it is the earliest MARKET price in the chain, against which the GBP 1,280 of 1861 can be read. - **1893-04-17** Paul Chevallier and Charles Mannheim, Paris, The Frederic Spitzer sale, 17 April - 16 June 1893, lot 1761 - Estimate: Not published - Hammer: Not published in the source consulted - With premium: Not published in the source consulted - From Sotheby's provenance chain. This is the sale that disperses the Spitzer holding, and Hayward's 1970 article - already source 5 on this record - is what later showed the elaborate Spitzer feet to be nineteenth-century forgeries. The record already carries that argument in prose; it did not carry the sale. No figure is claimed. The date given is the opening day of a two-month sale. ## Exhibitions - Special Loan Exhibition; two tazze lent by the dealer Richard Attenborough, South Kensington Museum, London, 1862 - Symposium and photographic campaign, 18-19 June; all twelve reunited and temporarily reassembled correctly, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014 - The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery, 12 December 2017 to 11 March 2018, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2017-2018 - The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery, 18 April to 21 July 2018, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, 2018 ## Literature - Julia Siemon (ed.), 'The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery', The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2017, distributed by Yale University Press. ISBN 978-1-58839-639-6. - John F. Hayward, on the Aldobrandini Tazze, 1970, at pages 669 and 674. ## Open questions - Who made the set? No maker's mark, town mark or date letter of the period of manufacture exists on any of the thirteen components. The star over M within a shield on two baluster stems is unidentified. - Who commissioned it? Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, whose family gives the set its name, demonstrably did not: he bought six on the Milan market in 1602. The Netherlandish and Habsburg origin proposed by Julia Siemon is an argument from documents and comparanda, not a record of a commission. No later publication has named a maker. - How did Cardinal Pietro get the other six? His accounts record the purchase of six in March 1602 and show no purchase of a second group at any time, yet all twelve are in his 1603 inventory. - Where were they between 1769 and 1826? The last Italian record is a document of 1769; they reappear in a London shop in 1826, and the intervening fifty-seven years are undocumented. - Where is the forty-nine-page manuscript that described all the scenes? Lost since 1893, the year of the Spitzer sale. - Where is the original Titus statuette? Lost. The figure standing in for it is a nineteenth-century copy of the Julius Caesar statuette. - Who made the elaborate Spitzer feet? Hayward showed in 1970 that they are not original and the catalogue names Vasters for the one on the Vespasian tazza, but the derivation of the group is given as unknown. - Will the set ever be reassembled correctly in fact? The 2014 reunion corrected the pairings only for the duration of the photography. Most of the emperors went home standing over another ruler's life. - For the 1982 sale at 231,000 US dollars, the 2000 sale at 1 million pounds, and the 2013 sale at 1,426,500 US dollars, is the figure the hammer or the price with premium in each case? None of the sources consulted distinguishes, and after 1975 those are different numbers. - Who bought the Nero-Augustus tazza in the private sale that preceded its scheduled 6 February 2025 appearance at Christie's, and for how much? The sale was reported as private in the trade press within weeks of the auction date; neither buyer nor price has since been made public. - Was the Al Thani Collection the buyer at the February 2013 Sotheby's sale of the Vespasian tazza, or did it acquire the piece in a later, unrecorded transaction before the 2017-18 exhibition? The sources consulted establish both facts (the 2013 sale and the 2017-18 Al Thani lender credit) but not the link between them. ## Sources - [1] Julia Siemon (ed.), 'The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery', The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2017, distributed by Yale University Press, ISBN 978-1-58839-639-6. Essays by Mary Beard, Julia Siemon, Wolfram Koeppe, Michele Bimbenet-Privat, Stefanie Walker, Xavier F. Salomon, Ellenor Alcorn and Timothy Schroder, and Linda Borsch, Federico Caro and Mark T. Wypyski. Read in full. The single indispensable source; every figure, pairing, owner and date below that is not attributed elsewhere comes from it. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection API record for object 199659, the Vitellius Tazza, accession 45.60.58a-h. Source for the Fletcher Fund credit line of 1945, the date 'ca. 1587-99, foot added after mid-19th century', and gallery 520. Re-checked August 2026, resolves. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection API record for object 210764, the Claudius Tazza, accession 2024.436, Wrightsman Fund 2024. Source for the maker line 'Unknown, Flemish, Antwerp ?, late 16th c.', the dimensions and the weight of 2.95 kg. This acquisition post-dates the 2017 catalogue, in which the Claudius tazza is plate 5, a private collection on loan to the museum. Re-checked August 2026, resolves. - [4] Wikimedia Commons, raw wikitext of the Metropolitan Museum image files for accession 45.60.58a-h, in two upload generations. The earlier files carry 'probably Italian', 'ca. 1580' and 'Silver-gilt'; the later files carry 'Netherlandish?', 'ca. 1587-99, foot added after mid-19th century'. Read as wikitext, not as an API summary. Re-checked August 2026, resolves. - [5] John F. Hayward, 'The Aldobrandini Tazze', The Burlington Magazine, vol. 112, no. 811 (October 1970), pp. 669-676. Demonstrates that the elaborate feet supplied to the six Spitzer tazze are not original. Full journal citation identified via secondary reference in August 2026 (not previously given in this record); the article itself remains NOT CONSULTED DIRECTLY, cited here from source 1 at pages 669 and 674. The JSTOR link is bot-blocked to command-line fetching (HTTP 403); this is consistent with JSTOR's routine blocking of non-browser requests and is not evidence the article is unavailable. Replace with the printed article when a subscription copy can be read. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, public object page for the Vitellius Tazza. Bot-blocked to command-line fetching (Vercel security checkpoint, HTTP 429); the collection API at source 2 returns the same record and was used instead. Re-tested August 2026: still 429-blocked to curl and to WebFetch under the same Vercel checkpoint. - [7] Sotheby's, Masterworks sale, New York, lot 10, 'The Morgan Aldobrandini Tazza: Vespasian', 1 February 2013. Gives the full provenance chain for this specific tazza from Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini's 1603 inventory through the Christie's 1982 Morgan Collection sale, and the 2013 estimate of USD 400,000-800,000. Fetched August 2026. - [8] 'At Auction: Recapping Old Masters at Sotheby's', Enfilade (18th-century studies blog), 7 February 2013. Reports the price achieved for the Morgan Aldobrandini Tazza (Vespasian) at the 1 February 2013 Sotheby's Masterworks sale as USD 1,426,500 against the USD 400,000-800,000 estimate. Independent confirmation of the figure given by source 7's own sale listing. Fetched August 2026. - [9] Christie's, 'Inside the silver collection of Selim and Mary Zilkha', specialist feature published ahead of 'Global Treasury: The Life and Collection of Selim & Mary Zilkha', New York, 6 February 2025. Describes the Nero-Augustus Aldobrandini tazza as the sale's top lot, estimate USD 2,000,000-3,000,000, and states it is the first Aldobrandini tazza to be offered at auction since the 2017 exhibition. Fetched August 2026. - [10] 'Vendute l'82% delle opere di Selim e Mary Zilkha', Il Giornale dell'Arte, February 2025. States directly, quoted here in the original Italian: 'e stato pero venduto privatamente prima dell'asta e ancora non si conosce ne l'acquirente ne il prezzo pagato' (it was sold privately before the auction and neither the buyer nor the price paid is yet known). Also gives the overall sale result of about USD 6.63 million at an 82 per cent sell-through rate. Fetched August 2026. - [11] The Holburne Museum, 'The Schroder Gallery: Now Open!', museum news page, September 2025. Confirms the new Schroder Gallery opened to the public on 11 September 2025 and states that the Renaissance silver on display, including the Aldobrandini tazza, is 'a loan to the Holburne from the Estate of the late British banker Bruno Schroder, by his daughter Leonie and her family'. Fetched August 2026. - [12] Victoria and Albert Museum, online catalogue record for 'The Aldobrandini Tazza', accession M.247-1956. Primary museum source for the Domitian-on-Tiberius tazza, added in August 2026 to strengthen sourcing beyond the 2017 catalogue and the Met's own two accession records; confirms no change in this holding. Fetched August 2026. - [13] Wikipedia, 'Aldobrandini Tazze'. Tertiary source; used in August 2026 only to cross-check the twelve-piece holder list against the 2017 catalogue and to flag pieces whose status might have changed since 2018 for independent, primary verification. Not relied on as the sole basis for any fact in this record; every claim drawn from it above is independently confirmed by a museum, auction house or press source. Should be replaced with primary citations as the record is further developed. - [14] christies.com, web page cited for the Christie's, New York sale of 2025-02-06. - [15] christies.com, web page cited for the Christie's, New York sale of 2025-02-06. - [16] apollo-magazine.com, web page cited for the Christie's, New York sale of 2025-02-06. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.