Exclusive Collection Monkey with Snuff Box

"To give the monkey sugar." In German, this expression refers to exuberance, high spirits and playful energy. Someone who "gives the monkey sugar" is in an exceptionally good mood, full of enthusiasm and ready for amusement.

Monkeys were already revered in ancient Egypt and had been kept at European courts since the fourteenth century. In 1732, Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) created the model of a monkey holding a snuffbox.

Within Christian symbolism, the monkey can represent luxury and vanity, but also cunning, sensuality and indulgence. When depicted holding an apple in its mouth, it alludes to the Fall of Man.

Around 1560, tobacco seeds introduced from South America to Spain reached France through Jean Nicot (1530-1600), the French ambassador to Portugal. In the following decades, taking snuff became fashionable at the French court. Snuff tobacco and the snuffbox came to symbolise the pleasures of life and aristocratic refinement.

The chain carried by the monkey is likewise a traditional symbol of attachment to worldly and sensual pleasures.

Whether Kaendler intended this sculpture as a satire on the rapidly growing eighteenth-century fashion for smoking and snuff-taking has not been recorded. What remains unmistakable, however, is his portrayal of a timeless human conflict between desire and reason.