1 / Converging Cultures

Artist / Origin |
Unknown artist, Venice, Italy
Region: Europe
|
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Date |
ca. 1500–25
Period: 1400 CE - 1800 CE
|
Material |
Free-blown glass, enameled and gilded
Medium: Glass, Jewelry, and Metalwork
|
Dimensions | H: 12 3/8 in. (31.4 cm.) |
Location | Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY |
Credit | Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art |
expert perspective
Alan ChongCurator of the Collection, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum |
expert perspective

“backIn the fifteenth century, as Venice began to expand its trading empire, it came into conflict with the Ottomans. The Ottomans were an Islamic dynasty. There are craftsmen from the East who are brought to Venice to produce metalwork and glass. Beautiful trays and vessels that were produced in what is now Lebanon and Syria were eagerly imported to Venice. Islamic glass was seen as so sophisticated in terms of coloring and lightness and shape. And immediately after glass was imported, it starts being copied by the glass makers in Murano. Venetian glass not only copies Islamic forms, it is quickly regarded as finer, lighter, more delicate, and therefore more superior, in the end.”