Etruscan Boy

During the 1790s Bath was at the height of its popularity as a spa resort with a steady influx of well-heeled visitors. Given that Jacob Spornberg was just one of almost twenty artists based in the city who specialised in painting portrait miniatures and/or profiles, it must have been difficult to stand out. Spornberg though was creative and had developed two distinctive styles of miniature profiles, one ‘executed in the Etruscan Manner’ in vermilion red and black, the other ‘in cameo’, a more subtle style where a sepia portrait stands out against a dark background.

This small piece is one of his Etruscan-style silhouettes, so-called as it is reminiscent of the red-figure Etruscan pottery invented at Athens about 530 BC. To create it an outline of the sitter and a decorative border were drawn on convex glass in thin black paint against a black ground and then the whole was coated in vermilion enamel creating a striking contrast. It was a style that was soon imitated, though to lesser effect, by his contemporary Charles Rosenberg.

Given their comparative rarity on the market, it seems fair to speculate that this new style was not overly popular though Spornberg continued to advertise it over the length of his career.

As the smallest known jewellery piece by Spornberg, it shows a little boy with large eyes and tousled hair in a shirt with a ruff collar and frill under a coat with deep lapels typical of the early 1790s. The silhouette is signed in red ‘SPORNBERG Fecit’ under the bust-line. There are a couple of scratches to the glass surface but these do not distract nor detract. The small profile is set in a gilt-metal frame with a brooch pin and C-clasp.

Born in Finland in 1768, Spornberg had settled in Bath by 1790 where his wife Rebecca ran a millinery shop in Milsom Street. Following her death in 1840, Spornberg emigrated to the USA to join his son.