8 - Glass Vase

Glass Vase Venice, mid-16th century A clear glass vase with two handles; the oval-shaped bowl rests on a trumpet-shaped foot. It is decorated at the rim of the neck with a white vetro a retorti fillet and, lower down, with a double band of colorless glass. Two bands of vetro a retorti between bands of vetro a fili encircle the shoulder of the vase, and the body is decorated with 16 vertical, radiating ribs of vetro a retorti in slight relief. Two “S”-shaped handles made of colorless glass are attached to the neck and shoulder of the vase. It rests on a truncated conical foot composed of 28 alternating strips of twisted glass and filigree glass, separated by a colorless glass collar. A band of colorless glass is applied to the upper edge of the foot. H. 28.5 cm. 465 g. Condition: The interior of the bowl’s body is partially crizzled, and an extremely fine horizontal crack approximately 2 cm long is located directly beneath one of the handles, likely caused by thermal shock during the object’s manufacture. Provenance: Christie’s, Milan, June 10, 2002, lot 515, described as having belonged to a noble Sicilian family. There are only a small number of two-handled vases featuring a similar “latticino” decoration on the lower part of the body, either in the form of radiating ribs or “nipt diamond waies.” An example with a lion-mask-shaped stem is illustrated in Robert Schmidt, *Das Glas*, 1922, fig. 67; it was formerly in the Schlossmuseum in Berlin and was likely destroyed during World War II. A second example, supported by a hollow knot and a twisted-glass foot, is housed at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Hess and Husband, *European Glass*, no. 27), and a third, also on a twisted-glass foot, is at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan (Mariacher, 1959, no. 43). Finally, a fourth is housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The comparison between our example and the others must end here, as the Poldi Pezzoli vases, Getty, and Fitzwilliam vases are all of much inferior quality, and the glass of the Getty example is described as “rather heavy, with countless tiny bubbles and embedded with small black impurities.” These examples should be compared to a drawing of lidded vases with handles, likely associated with the Medici workshop in Florence in the 1560s and early 1570s, run by the Venetian master glassmaker Bartolo. However, none of them match the perfectly balanced craftsmanship or style of Venetian glassware from the same period, which makes our vase a unique example in the literature consulted.