The animal is shown advancing, its neck slightly outstretched, wings barely detached from the body. The beak and legs are gilded. It stands on a base with a rosewood veneer with applications of gilded bronze depicting bearded satyr masks. The edges are plain at the top and with a row of meanders at the bottom. In the long sculptural tradition of depictions of nature, the swan takes on a subtly moral symbolism. According to some Latin authors like Statius, Horace and Ovid, the swan is the animal that pulls the chariot of Venus, a demonstration that “i gusti de gl’amanti sono simili al canto del cigno, il quale è tanto più dolce, quanto quello animale è più vicino a morire, e così tanto più gode l’innamorato quanto più pena in amore” . Again according to Ripa’s Iconologia, from which the above citation is drawn, the swan can also be considered an attribute of hypocrisy because “ha le penne candide e la carne nera”, or a symbol of poetry because as it grows older its song becomes more harmonious. The swan was often used for valuable table furnishings, usually made of silver, in the form of containers for mixing or stand-alone ornaments. A famous example is the recipient in the form of a swan held in the Kremlin Armoury, the work of the German silversmith Herman Kauffmann, active in Sweden (active c. 1643-1670). It was donated by Charles XI of Sweden to Czar Alexis Mikhailovich in 1674 . Much more daring in form is the flagon in the shape of a swan with a twisted neck, again in the Armoury in Moscow and also documented as a gift of the Swedish crown to the Czar, thirty years before that mentioned above, probably in 1644: this piece was made by the goldsmith Vevert Kettwyck, active in Hamburg . In the long list of display silverware in this form, we should also recall the pieces by Huybert van de Berch, a goldsmith from Dordrecht in Holland. We have mentioned recipients evidencing the interest of Northern European goldsmiths in representations of this kind, though the work presented here seems to be an independent sculpture, destined more for a cabinet of curiosities and valuables than for a princely sideboard. The comparison nonetheless helps us to establish an approximate date in the late 17th century or the beginning of the next century at the latest. With the pieces mentioned above it shares the exacting naturalism of both the unusual pose and the details, as we can appreciate in the plumage on the bird’s body, executed in such fine detail as to render its softness almost palpable, while the large wing feathers are rendered with realistically graphic clarity.