An early Venetian enamelled and gilt goblet, circa 1500
2
An early Venetian enamelled and gilt goblet, circa 1500
The slightly waisted bell-shaped bowl painted on two sides with a mythical creature bearing the head and comb of a bird, a long neck and human torso with serpent's tail and dragon's feet, below a gilt band painted with blue dots between two narrow lines of white and red dots, with an applied pincered collar to the base of the bowl highlighted in yellow, the tall conical foot painted with alternating blue and yellow and red and yellow vertical stripes, the foot with folded rim, 13.4cm high
Sold for £75,650 inc. premium

Footnotes

  • Provenance:
    With Heide Hübner, Würzburg
    With Sheppard & Cooper

    Literature:
    David Battie and Simon Cottle, Sotheby's Concise Encyclopaedia of Glass (1991), p.62

    For the type see Brigitte Klesse & Axel von Saldern, 500 Jahre Glaskunst, Sammlung Biemann (1978), p.302, lot 254.

    A Venetian goblet, circa 1500, of similar form painted with a coat of arms is to be found in the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor (see R.J.Charleston and Michael Archer, Glass and Enamels (1977), pp.82-86, no.15). A further example in the same collection (op.cit., pp.87-90, no.16) with a similar bowl shape but on an elaborate stem and foot, is decorated with three centaurs of close inspiration. Charleston illustrates an Italian drawing of the centaurs, circa 1465, in the British Museum, in which the extended torsos closely resemble those of the mythological creatures on the present lot. See also the bowl fragment painted with two centaurs in the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, illustrated by Jet Pijzel-Dommisse and Titus M. Eliëns, Glinsterend Glas (2009), pp.62-63, no.78.

Category: Decorative Arts / Glass

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