Coconut Cup with Biblical Scenes from the Life of David
Carving: Netherlands; mounts: London
1577-78
- Medium
- Gilded silver and coconut shell
- Classification
- Metalwork
- Dimensions
- 22.9 × 11.2 × 11.6 cm (9 × 4 3/8 × 4 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- London
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Applied Arts of Europe
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Stanley Keith
- 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
Coconuts, a precious curio from the New World, were so highly prized in Europe during the early modern era that they were fashioned into elegant vessels by silversmiths. They made noteworthy additions to princely curiosity cabinets and may also have served a medicinal purpose. John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum (1640), for instance, credits wine drunk from a coconut with curing colic, epilepsy, and rheumatoid disorders.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
