German goldsmith, active in Augsburg. Renaissance Augsburg was, after Nuremberg, the greatest of the German manufacturing and commercial cities, and a ready supply of silver enabled its guild of goldsmiths to fashion great numbers of richly ornamented vessels for export. Joachim Friess became master goldsmith in Augsburg in 1610. Other biographical data are not available about him.
This drinking vessel with Diana mounted on a stag was made of silver, cast, embossed, chased, engraved parcel-gilt, partial coloured cold-enamel decoration fully functional original spring-driven mechanism.
This sculpture is not only a masterpiece of the goldsmith’s art but also an ingenious object of stately display and courtly banqueting ceremonial: it belongs to a group of automata featuring Diana, goddess of the chase, the bases of which concealed a clockwork mechanism that propelled the object across the dining table in a series of controlled movements. The guest in front of whom it came to a stop would then have to lift the stag with its rider from the base, remove the head of the animal with its antlers and drink from its body. As long as the animal’s body was still full, it was still relatively easy to drink from it, but the emptier it became, the greater the risk of spilling the remaining contents over one’s face and clothing - to the amusement of one’s dining companions.
The ‘invention’ of the composition of Diana mounted on a stag is attributed to the Augsburg goldsmith Matthias Walbaum (b. ca. 1555), master goldsmith in Augsburg, who produced the first examples of such groups around the turn of the 17th century. Jakob I. Miller (c. 1550-1618), and Joachim Fries produced their own variations of this type from around 1610 in Augsburg.
Elaborate silver automata were among the most marvelous works of art in German princely collections. The south German city of Augsburg specialized in such courtly drinking amusements during the seventeenth century. The base of this automaton contained a wind-up mechanism that moved it across the table. Once it came to a standstill, the diner closest to it removed the stag’s head and drank the wine from the body.
The present automaton was made of cast and chased silver, partially gilded and painted with translucent lacquers. There are other versions in various collections.
Joachim Friess was a German goldsmith who became master goldsmith in 1610 in Augsburg.
Renaissance Augsburg was, after Nuremberg, the greatest of the German manufacturing and commercial cities, and a ready supply of silver enabled its guild of goldsmiths to fashion great numbers of richly ornamented vessels for export. This automaton, in which the goddess Diana, designed in late Mannerist style, is seated on a hollow-bodied stag with a removable head, functioned as a drinking vessel. A mechanism in the base causes the automaton to roll about on a tabletop in a pentagonal pattern and then stop; the person before whom it stopped would have to drain the contents. Diana’s quiver and arrow and the jewels set in the trappings of the stag are modern replacements.
