Getty Museum

Goblet

Date

1540–1560

Medium

Free- and mold-blown colorless (purplish-gray) glass with gilding and cold painted and applied decoration

Culture

Austrian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

Although the Venetians tried to protect their monopoly of colorless *cristallo* (crystal) glass, issuing orders and threatening terrible punishments to workers who emigrated to the North, the manufacture of this glass spread to many parts of Europe in the 1500s. Consumers from all over Europe coveted the colorless *cristallo,* as it reproduced the brilliance and clarity of precious rock crystal. In 1534 in Hall, Austria, Emperor Ferdinand I opened one of the earliest manufactories *producing façon de Venise* 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. This goblet's flat foot and hollow stem imitate vessels produced in Murano fifty years earlier. But its body, molded in a pattern of drop-shaped protrusions painted in gold, white, and green, depends more on Germanic influences. Only traces of the paint remain, making it now impossible to guess the original design in gold or even to know how much of the goblet was covered.

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