Getty Museum

Goblet

Date

1475–1500

Medium

Free- and mold-blown colorless and cobalt-blue glass with gold leaf, enamel, and applied decoration

Culture

Italian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

This two-colored goblet is composed of two parts made separately. Glassmakers could make the ribbed, colorless body alone as a beaker (without a foot) or combine it with a trumpet-shaped foot, as in this case, to make a goblet (with a foot). Rows of alternating red and blue enamel dots of varying configurations ornament the rim, all on an elaborate gold-leaf ground incised with a band of foliate and palmette patterns. In the 1400s and 1500s, the island of Murano served as both a fashionable resort for Venetian nobility and the preeminent center of glass production in Europe. To protect the reputation of Murano's glass and to increase its value, buyers were required to purchase the island's products directly from the producers. For the Renaissance traveler, watching the production of Murano glass thus became, as it remains today, an important tourist attraction.

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