Footnotes

The present lot appears to belong to a group of 17th century coloured glass vessels with gilt-metal mounts traditionally attributed to Venice of which several vases and bowls are to be found in the James De Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor. These examples are discussed at length in the catalogue by R.J.Charleston and Michael Archer, Glass and Stained Glass, (1977), pp.21-25, cat. nos.29-35. The colours are normally emerald-green, deep blue, or blue-green. The dichroic nature of the green glass of one of the bottle vases in the present lot is a curious phenomenon which is not noted in the Waddesdon group. Under certain light conditions the glass metal turns aquamarine as displayed in the catalogue illustration. It otherwise appears as a much paler version of its darker emerald companion.

Although Venice is considered generally to be the source of this group, it has been suggested that they may have originated from either Spain or South Germany. Similar examples have been found in Spanish private collections and others are illustrated in at least two Spanish paintings of the 17th century. The trade links between Italy and Spain were, however, strong at this time and the poorer quality of the glass produced in Barcelona and elsewhere in Spain at this time weakens the argument in favour of a Spanish attribution. There are no known examples with a South German provenance whilst examples are found in collections in Italy offering a more convincing origin. The glass-metal is characteristically thick and heavy, however, free of the fantasy typical of other Venetian glass of this period, which may suggest that they could have been made elsewhere in Italy. Little is known of the glasshouses in Florence, for example, which were set up in 1629 and 1657.

The openwork mounts of the present lot are quite distinct and differ from the more commonplace pedestal foot with turned mouldings found on the Waddesdon pieces. Although there are similarities in the form of decoration of the term handles and the scrolling, the quality of the chasing and moulding of the metalwork varies considerably throughout all the examples in this group.

Significantly, with reference to the coloured glass metal, it is worth bearing in mind that Cosimo I founded a glasshouse at Pisa and it was here that the priest Antonio Neri conducted many of his experiments on coloured glasses. In his famous work L'Arte Vetraria, published in Florence in 1612, Book I contains a number of recipes for 'aquamarine' and 'emerald'. Of the three aquamarine recipes he says that he tried one out in the Casino in Florence in 1602, another at Pisa in the same year, and the third in Pisa; of two of the recipes for emerald green he states that he had proved them in Pisa. It is therefore interesting to speculate whether these two bottle vases were the production of Neri's glasshouse which may be why the mounts are slightly different from those possibly produced either in Venice or Florence.