goblet
- Museum number
- S.853
- Description
-
Goblet; glass; deep, wide bowl enamelled on one side with figure of lady in blue dress with black fan; coat of arms with ornate blue and gilt mantling; gilt scale design band at rim, with blue and white dots; gilt baluster stem; folded foot.
- Production date
- 16thC (late)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 126 millimetres
-
Height: 115 millimetres
-
Weight: 364 grammes
- Curator's comments
- Form, proportions and etched gilded design here identical to Lehman goblet in MMA dated 1592 with arms [partly identified as Tyrolean] attributed to Innsbruck in Tyrol or Southern Germany. Belongs to a group with full-length portraits of men and women and with German-style arms. Enamelling like this was less fashionable in Venice from mid 1500s but continued in N.Europe, so was this made in Venice for a German customer or made in German, or Austrian glasshouse by a Venetian or native craftsman? Tait compares with the Pantaloon glass in BM which he says is Venetian.
Form of this one is not obviously Venetian but does look more like pieces attributed to Tyrol or S Germany. But could be made to German client taste in Venice?
See Dora Thornton, “Venice or façon de Venise? Two enamelled glasses in the British Museum”, Study Days on Venetian Glass, 2013-2014, eds. Rosa Barovier and Cristina Tonini, Venice, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2014, pp. 127-139.
This glass is discussed by Neil MacGregor and Dora Thornton on BBC Radio 4, Shakespeare's Restless World, programme broadcast on 1 May 2012.
For commedia dell'arte figures on early 17th C ceramics from Montelupo in Tuscany see C RavanelliGuidotti, The Figurato Maiolica of Montelupo, Florence 2012, pp. 122-6. DFT
- Location
- On display (G46/dc5)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2012 19 Jul-25 Nov, London, BM Shakespeare: Staging the World
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- S.853
