Getty Museum

Footed Bowl (Coppa)

Date

about 1500

Medium

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

Culture

Italian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

Vessels made of glass colored blue, amethyst, or emerald-green with the additions of metallic oxides constitute a special small group of ornamental vessels. Enameling further enhanced the effect of the colored ground. Here, an unusual design of crouching lions set in arcades decorates a broad area below the lip of this deep-blue footed bowl. While the glass was hot, two separate parts, a hollow foot with a folded rim and a bowl with projecting vertical ribs, were joined to create this form. 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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