The size and beauty of the mounts make this piece an outstanding work of the so-called “Fontainebleau School”, already described in the inventory of goods at the Château de Pau, made for Queen Jeanne III in 1561-1562, among the objects that made up the treasure of the kings of French Navarre. The inventory of her son Henry IV confirms its presence among the royal possessions, this time in Paris, in 1601. The body and mouth are of rock crystal, and the foot and handle of metal. On the handle are two figures sculpted in the round: a young man leaning over the mouth of the ewer, and a nymph. They represent the myth of Narcissus, with a possible emblematic reading in a moralising Christian vein. The work attains perfection when the ewer is filled and the boy appears to be transformed into a flower as he regards his image in the water, so bringing the myth to life.

The myth of Narcissus, related by Ovid in Book III of his Metamorphoses, alludes to the dangers of egolatry, and so constitutes a warning for princes and potentates. Narcissus, smitten by his own beauty, disdains those who love him. One such is the nymph Echo, who is condemned to repeat the ends of sounds and so is cruelly rejected. The young man falls in love with himself when he sees himself reflected in the waters of a spring, and is transformed by Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, into a beautiful but odourless flower. An exemplum of pride and vanity, the myth admits a Christian allegorical reading which might have been suitable for the Calvinist court of French Navarre.

The female figure on the handle may represent the nymph Echo, with her arms crossed to denote impotence, and her mouth open in a scream as she discovers she has lost her voice. The lower part of the female body which completed the handle, stolen in 1918, consisted of a thick braid of interlaced serpents, probably an allusion to the soothsayer Tiresias, who cryptically warned Narcissus’ mother that he would enjoy a long life “as long as he never knows himself”.

The characteristics of this work allow us to attribute its mounts to the circle of the Toutain family of silversmiths, and it is thought it might be the work of Richard Toutain the Younger. The ewer rests on a flared gold foot with arabesques forming a network of interlaced white enamel bands on embedded black enamel. Appearing among them are children’s heads, also enamelled, and holes for setting rubies cut in oval cabochons. The rock crystal body, made in two pieces, is cut fairly thick, and adheres to the Milanese model of gadroons on the upper and lower parts with a broad central band delimited by mouldings. Arbeteta reported Alcouffe’s hypothesis, supported by Bimbenet-Privat, that the crystal was cut in France, and admitted this possibility without discarding its probable Milanese origin. The handle is inspired by models by Hans Vredeman de Vries, similar to those of the so-called “Fontainebleau School”.

The Museo del Prado has the photograph by Juan Laurent y Minier, Aiguière, en cristal de roche taillé, montures d’argent doré avec appliques d’or, émail et pierreries, XVIe. siècle, règne de Henri II , c. 1879. Museo del Prado, HF 835/046 (L. Arbeteta, in press).