A façon de Venise diamond-point engraved, gilt and 'cold-painted' vase and cover, Court Glasshouse, Innsbruck or Venice, 1570-90
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A façon de Venise diamond-point engraved, gilt and 'cold-painted' vase and cover, Court Glasshouse, Innsbruck or Venice, 1570-90
The shouldered ovoid form divided into two panels, two with medallions cold-painted in red, green and brown and enriched in gilding depicting a helmeted warrior to dexter flanked by panels of diamond-engraved foliate scrolls above engraved entwined ribbon and false gadroons, the shoulder with two moulded engrailed bands with traces of gilding enclosing a diamond-engraved laurel wreath entwined with cold-painted ribbon and applied with three gilt moulded raspberry prunts, the neck with a band of red, green and gilt lyre ornament beneath an engraved foliate border, the bowl set on a flattened knop flanked by mereses above a conical foot engraved with false gadroons, the double-domed cover with knopped baluster finial and engraved and gilt ornament, 32.5cm high (flaking to cold-painting and gilding rubbed) (2)
Sold for £55,250 inc. premium

Footnotes

  • Provenance:
    The Bagnasco Collection, Lugano, sold at Christie's, 28 March 2000, lot 282

    Exhibited:
    Musée Ariana, Geneva, May-September 1995, no.183

    Literature:
    Erwin Baumgartner, Verre de Venise - Trésors Inédit (Ariana Museum exhibition catalogue, 1995), pp.45 and 49, no.183

    In 1570 Archduke Ferdinand II of the Tyrol founded a glasshouse at Innsbruck with craftsmen from Murano who he had obtained by pressurising the Venetian authorities. The cultured Regent had created the most celebrated cabinet of curiosities of the time at Schloss Ambras (the greater part of those objects are now preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna) and his interest in glass stemmed from this passion for the rare and curious object, even to the extent of his blowing glass himself. Venetian master glassblowers recorded at Innsbruck include Pietro d'Orso (1571), Salvatore and Sebastiano Savonetti (1573-1578) and Andrea Tudino (1575 and 1583) all of whom had to return to Murano having honoured their contracts.

    For comparable examples in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, see Erich Egg, Die Glashütten zu Hall und Innsbruck im 16. Jahrhundert, Tiroler Wirtschaftsstudien, 15, Innsbruck (1962), pl.XIV, nos. 27 and 28; also see Rainer Ruckert, Die Glassammlung des Bayersischen Nationalmuseums München, vol.I (1982), pl.39, no.147; Egg 1962, pl.XV, no.30 and pl.XVII, no.35; Olga Drahotova, Europäisches Glas (1982), p.37, no.12; Rudolf von Strasser & Walter Spiegl, Dekoriertes Glas (1989), p.163, no.6 and Attilia Dorigato, Il Museo vetrario di Murano (1986), pl.21.

    The long accepted attribution to the Court Glasshouse at Innsbruck for this unusual group of glass with its distinctive grey and 'cold-painted' and diamond-point engraved decoration has been questioned and a tentative attribution to Venice suggested, see A.-E.Theuerkauff-Liederwald, Venezianisches Glas der Veste Coburg (1994), p.242 and Baumgartner, op.cit 1995, p.99 where he notes that the Archduke continued to purchase Venetian pieces after the opening of his own Glasshouse mentioning that in 1575, for example, he acquired "10 vergoldete Deckelpokale" (see Egg, op.cit. (1962), p.45).

Category: Decorative Arts / Glass

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