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The wealthy mathematician and university professor Alfred Pringsheim (1850-1941), Thomas Mann's father-in-law, owned one of Germany's most important private collections of Renaissance art - especially applied art. Amassed between 1880 and the First World War, it focused mainly on Italian maiolica and silver from German-speaking regions. Pringsheim displayed his collection in his own home, a mansion in Munich built by Berlin architects and furnished in southern German-Swiss Late Renaissance style. Photographs that have only recently come to light allow the ambitious staging of the ensemble within this historicist interior to be reconstructed. After the Nazi seizure of power, the Jewish Pringsheims were forced to sell their house to the National Socialists. The silver collection was confiscated by the Gestapo in 1938 and acquired by the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in 1941. Following their restitution to Pringsheim's heirs, the silver objects at the centre of this study are now scattered all over the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the sketch of a male head, titled Greisenköpfchen (old man's head), by Hans Baldung, as part of drawing collection of the art museum Galleria Estense, in Modena, Italy. The sketch measuring 6x3 cm became visible on the back of the drawing Death and the Mercenary, in the course of a restoration carried out in the 1980s. The meaning of the male head drawing, which is believed to have been in Italy since the 17th century, is not clear. Nevertheless, the attribution of the drawing to Baldung remains uncontroversial.

The article discusses the history and significance of the silver table service of England's King George III, which is said to be among the largest and best exemplars of early classicism of the late eighteenth century. The origin of the service is described as a proposal to melt down and reuse old silver pieces reworked in rococo style by Frantz Peter Bundsen of Hannover, Germany. Other proposals were received from smiths in Paris, France, Vienna, Austria, and Rome, Italy. The ultimate commission, using classicistic forms, went to Parisian goldsmith Robert-Joseph Auguste. Numerous subsequent copies were made by Frantz Peter Bundsen.