Getty Museum

Goblet (Kelchpokal)

Date

1535–1555

Medium

Free- and mold-blown colorless (purplish gray) glass with gilding

Culture

Austrian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

Although the Venetians tried to protect their monopoly of colorless *cristallo* glass, issuing orders and threatening terrible punishments to workers who emigrated to the north, its manufacture spread to many parts of Europe in the 1500s. In 1534, in Hall, Austria, Emperor Ferdinand I opened one of the earliest glasshouses to produce Venetian-style glass in Northern Europe. Wolfgang Vitl ran the workshop, employing both Venetian glassblowers and local craftsmen. Vitl and his successor Sebastian Höchstetter produced vessels that are Italianate in shape but larger and sturdier than genuine Venetian products. Venetian vessels from half a century earlier influenced this goblet's form, but its pattern-molded knop is typical of mid-sixteenth-century glass from Hall.

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