A museum quality rock crystal goblet with hunting motifs
Moulded round base with a gold cuff supporting a tapering cup with two gold mounted handles. Decorated in three zones with sea creatures amid waves in the lower section, a hunting scene with a hunter in classical attire and two dogs chasing a deer and tendrils below the lip. H 10.5, D cup 7.6 cm.
Attributed to Milan, 17th C.
This kind of vessel mounted with simple gold niello rings is a typical product of the Milanese workshops of the 17th century, which worked in the style of the Sarachi. The stone cutter Giovanni Battista Metellino, who can be traced in Milan at the end of the 17th century and who worked mainly on rock crystals, successfully copied this style, albeit with less technical skill. The details of the goblet presented here, the design with three zones of decor, the finely cut surface of the water with the deeply carved sea creatures, on the other hand, indicate an object that can probably be dated earlier, probably at the beginning of the 17th century.
Provenance
S.J. Phillips Ltd. London.
From a Rhenish private collection.
Literature
Cf. Distelberger, Die Kunst des Steinschnitts. Prunkgefäße, Kameen und Commessi aus der Kunstkammer, Milan-Vienna 2003, cat. no. 44.
Cf. Bascou/Bimbenet-Privat/Chapman, Royal Treasures from the Louvre. Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette, San Francisco 2012, cat. no. 27, the vase/bucket attributed to the Milanese workshop of Giovanni Battista Metellino, c. 1685, with similar cut decoration.
S.a. Louvre collection en ligne, inv. no. MR 297, a Milanese hunting goblet, dated 1550 - 80, and another goblet, c. 1600, with identical enamelled gold cuff, inv. no. MR 303.
S.a. Museo del Prado Madrid, online collection Inv. No. O000088, attributed to the Saracchi workshop, or O000085 with identical handles, similar grotesque decor and almost identical gold mounting, dated 1590 - 1610.
See also a "quatrefoil rock crystal bowl" with similar wave-cut decoration in the collection of the Uměleckoprůmyslové museum Prague, inv. no. 77.993/325-5, in Ebner, Salzburger Bergkristall - die hochfürstliche Kristallmühle, Salzburg 2002, cat. no. 34.