A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [191]
Our galleon crossed nothing more turbulent or more dangerous than a princely European dinner table, but it is a very fair likeness of those great European ocean-going vessels; it is the kind of galleon that Henry VIII had in his Mary Rose, and most notably the kind of ship that Spain sent against England in the Great Armada of 1588. They were normally three-masted, round-hulled war vessels designed to carry both troops and guns, and they were the key element in any sixteenth-century state’s navy. Absurdly, they were also popular table decorations, always referred to by the French word for this kind of ship – a nef.
The marine archaeologist Christopher Dobbs, who is in charge of the Mary Rose at Portsmouth dockyard, compares it to our gilded nef:
The Mary Rose is a little different from the nef – it’s a slightly earlier ship – but the Mary Rose is a very important part of naval warfare, because it was one of the first to have purpose-built lidded gun ports close to the waterline. These ships were so important, they were the powerful symbols of the time. This is the equivalent of the Space Shuttle. And I think that’s why they would have been so proud to have a nef that would trundle along the tables at a great dinner, because it wasn’t only a fantastic mechanical object but it also reflected the glory of the warships, perhaps the most advanced technological features of their time.
These great ships were the largest and most complex machines in the Europe of their day. The miniature gilded galleon is also a wonderfully constructed object, a masterpiece of both technological skill and high artistic decoration, of mechanics and goldsmithery. Paradoxically, this little ship was created for a society hundreds of miles from any sea, and it is highly likely that Hans Schlottheim, the landlocked craftsman who made it, had never seen a sea-going vessel. It was made towards the end of the sixteenth century in the rich banking city of Augsburg, in southern Germany, a Free City within the Holy Roman Empire, and so part of a huge sprawling territory that ran from Poland in the east to the Belgian channel ports in the west, all of which owed allegiance to the emperor, Rudolph II.
It is Rudolph that we see sitting in state on the deck of our ship. In front of the emperor are the seven electors, those princes of church and state in the German-speaking world who chose each new emperor and enriched themselves by bribes in the process. It is very likely that this ship was made for one of those electors, Augustus I of Saxony. Augustus’s inventory includes a description that almost exactly matches the British Museum’s galleon, so much so that we think it must refer to our nef.
A gilded Ship, skilfully made, with a quarter-and full-hour striking clock which is to be wound every 24 hours. Above with three masts, in the crow’s nests of which the sailors revolve and strike the quarters and hours with hammers on the bells. Inside, the Holy Roman Emperor sits on the Imperial throne, and in front of him pass the seven Electors with Heralds, paying homage as they receive their fiefs. Furthermore ten trumpeters and a kettle-drummer alternately announce the banquet. Also a drummer and three guardsmen, and sixteen small cannons, eleven of which may be loaded and fired automatically.
High on the stern of the ship sits