Cleveland Museum of Art

Marriage Beaker

Date

late 1400s

Medium

opaque glass (milk glass or lattimo), enameled

Culture

Italy, Venice

Department

Decorative Art and Design

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

By the mid-1400s the word lattimo had come to mean glass made milk-like by the addition of opacifying materials, such as an oxide of tin. It was imitative of Chinese porcelain. Only fourteen surviving pieces of lattimo vessels are recorded. These beakers may have been intended as betrothal or wedding gifts. This one is enameled with idealized portrait heads of a young man and woman. Such portrait heads of young women were also a feature of Italian Maiolica, especially those at Deruta (see "love dishes" in Gallery 219).

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.