The so-called ‘Bellarmine’ Mask on Imported Rhenish Stoneware

Abstract

Just over a century ago Mr. William Chaffers read to the British Archaeological Association a paper in which he gave the name of Bellarmines to those mottled stoneware vessels, with bearded masks as their principal decoration, which were imported in large quantities from the Rhineland to be the regular tavern-crockery of Tudor and Stuart London. This paper, published by the Association in volume v of its Journal, appears to be the source of the popular belief, which almost everybody quotes and nobody checks, that the mask and jug were intended to satirize the features and rotundity of Cardinal Bellarmine, perhaps the greatest theologian of his time and certainly, to the hard-drinking Protestants of England, north Germany, and the Low Countries, the most redoubtable champion of the Church of Rome. Chaffers himself does not go so far as to claim detailed resemblance of face and figure, but says ‘if we can in any way rely upon the portraits of him thus handed down to posterity, he must indeed have been exceedingly hard featured’. On the other hand, he does specifically claim to be justified in ‘christening anew’ this type of vessel with the cardinal's name, and popular acceptance has done the rest.