ITALIAN, 15TH, 16TH AND 17TH CENTURY

The very distinctive decoration of a mask surmounted by a pointed hat on largest mortar in the present lot appears on a number of German mortars including examples in the Schwarzach collection (e.g, Part 1, Lempertz, sale no. 1131, 17 May, 2019, lots 1066 and 1072 and Part 2, sale no. 1152, 29 May, 2020, lot 593).   

While much of the decoration on German mortars of this period is of course purely decorative it has been suggested that the pointed hat on these mortars possibly derived from the Medieval Jewish  pointed cap. As Naomi Lubrich has pointed out from the 12th till [the end of the 15th c.] such ‘Judenhut’  ‘served as a distinguishing sign for Jews in the German-speaking regions of the Holy Roman Empire.... [and, following the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215], it was imposed on Jews in the Middle Ages'. (N. Lubrich, 'The Wandering Hat: Iterations of the Medieval Jewish Pointed Cap,' Jewish History, vol. 29, No. 3/4 (December, 2015) pp. 203-244 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24709777].