Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Footed Bowl
Italian (Venice)
c. 1490
- Medium
- Blue glass, enamel, and gilding
- Classification
- Glass
- Dimensions
- 16.5 × 20.8 cm (6 1/2 × 8 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- Venice
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Applied Arts of Europe
- Credit line
- European Decorative Arts General Sales Proceeds Fund; purchased with funds provided by the Antiquarian Society; Richard T. Crane, Jr. Memorial Fund; Neville and John H. Bryan, Rosenwald Glass, and Kay and Frederick Krehbiel endowment funds
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This footed bowl was intended to make a luxurious statement in late fifteenth-century Italy. Brilliant blue glass, meant to replicate the color of sapphires, was a specialty of Venetian glass blowers. The finely painted enameled decoration—cherubs and fantastical sphinxes—as well as the classical shape of the vessel, reflects the Italian Renaissance admiration for art and design of ancient Rome.
Such bowls were used only for special occasions such as weddings or celebratory feasts. This example’s gilded rim is inscribed with the phrase TENPORE FELICI MVLTI NOMINANTVR AMICI [In times of abundance one has lots of friends] that evokes a festive environment of largess in which the bowl was originally used.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
