Images(2)

beaker

Object NameFooted Beaker with Grotesque Decoration

Made FromGlass, Enamel, Gilding

Dateabout 1500

TechniqueBlown, gilded, enameled

SizeOverall H: 13.4 cm; Rim Diam: 10.3 cm; Foot Diam: 7.9 cm

Accession Number79.3.191

Credit LineBequest of Jerome Strauss

Curatorial Area(s)

Early Modern

Exhibitions

Renaissance Venice: Life and Luxury at the Crossroads

The Yearning for Venetian Glass: Beauty that Traversed Oceans and Time

Interpretive Notes

Web Text

“Grotesque,” commonly used to denote something bizarre or absurd, is essentially an art term. It specifies an ornament of tendrils intertwined with creatures composed of human, animal, and plant shapes. By the time of Raphael (1483–1520), artists in Italy rediscovered this decorative pattern, which had originated in ancient Rome. It survived in the Domus Aurea, the remains of which were buried in the ground and therefore described as grottoe. Hence the name “grotesque” (Italian, grottesca). Renaissance grotesque ornaments remained popular for at least 100 years. They provided infinite possibilities for fantastic designs. Grotesque ornaments usually did not bear hidden meanings. Instead, they were applied for decorative purposes. The colorful decoration of the footed beaker shown here consists of two pairs of intertwined figures of half-human and half-plant shape. We do not know whether the addorsed white heads of some animals (possibly dogs) on either side of the bowl were intended merely as decoration, or whether they had some additional function, such as a reference to a coat of arms.

Place Made

Italy, Venice

Physical DescriptionFooted Beaker with Grotesque Decoration. Colorless. Blown; enameled, gilded. Beaker. Conical bowl with fire-polished rim, set directly on low, blown pedestal foot with infolded rim and with two pontil marks at its apex. First pontil mark was fire polished during second firing.

Bowl is painted with two pairs of Triton like figures, wearing frills of green leaves around the head, and terminating below the waist in elaborate corolla of indented yellow leaves. Their flesh is painted in white, with some red hatching, and internal details are rendered in black line. Between and above each pair rise red and blue stems that cross and branch, at their tops, into fleshy scrolled foliage with white four petaled flowers. Each pair of figures is linked to other by curving green stem that they hold in their hands; stem is crosshatched in black and ends in large bell shaped flowers in blue and red, with smaller trefoils in turquoise. Above these, and below joined bodies of Triton-like figures, are four thin, scrolled branches with flowers, bracts, and leaves.

Above lower border of conjoined yellow, blue, and red lines are two pairs of addorsed animal heads painted in white hatches with black. Below rim is gold border etched with two rows of scales, each fitted with red enamel dot; this is bounded, above and below, by lines of white dots enameled on glass. Foot is decorated with simulated gadrooning rendered by white petal forms shaded on one side by red line.
Provenance

Provenance Remark

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