The Wyvern Collection: Medieval and Renaissance Works of Art

New acquisitions of medieval and Renaissance art in the Wyvern Collection

This striking catalogue explores a remarkable collection of medieval and Renaissance art in various media. It includes stunning photography and original research, significantly broadening the scope of the existing scholarship on the subject. The Wyvern Collection stands out as one of the world's pre-eminent collections in private hands. Scholarly catalogues of its rich array of holdings have been published in recent years, but new, important pieces continue to be added. The Wyvern Collection includes all the medieval and Renaissance works of art acquired since 2020. 

Among the highlights in this volume are a striking German twelfth-century aquamanile in the form of a stag, a rare fourteenth-century cameo of the Virgin and Child, and a previously unknown enameled knop from a processional cross made by the esteemed Italian goldsmith and painter Nicola da Guardiagrele around 1410. Italian Renaissance ceramics are also well represented, with outstanding examples by sixteenth-century masters such as Giorgio Andreoli da Gubbio, the so-called Milan Marsyas Painter, Francesco Xanto Avelli, and Orazio Fontana da Urbino. Three painted enamels of Renaissance Limoges have also been added to the collection, including a magnificent ewer by Pierre Reymond. There are also sculptures in stone, wood, and bronze, and a sixteenth-century stained and painted glass roundel from the northern Netherlands perfectly complements the collection.

Beautiful photographs bring to light every detail of these pieces. The new additions are important documents for the history of collecting, as attested by the prestigious provenance of several of them―formerly in the Adda, Cottreau, Harris, Hunt, and Rothschild collections, among others.

Paul Williamson is keeper emeritus and honorary senior research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum.