New photography by Shannon Ruff captured with a digital camera-2006.

Glass Reliquary With Cover

CultureVenetian

Date1550-1599

MediumBlown glass

DimensionsOverall: 11 7/8 in. (30.2 cm)

InscribedLabel glued on side reads: "SS Innocentium et Alm".

Credit LineMuseum purchase

Object number94.9

On View

Chrysler Museum of Art, Gallery 116-2, Case 6

DescriptionThis is a Venetian Glass Reliquary with Cover from the second half of the 16th century. It is blown glass in a chalice-like form with colorless flaring cylindrical bowl set on a triple-knopped stem and folded conical foot in "vetro a fili" (opaque white threads). The reliquary has a domed colorless cover with folded lip surmounted by a gilt glass cross - formed of elements suggesting bones and tipped with opaque white glass.

Label TextRELIQUARY Venice Late 16th Century Blown glass with opaque white filigree. Mark: paper label on side with Latin inscription SS Innocentium et Alm Museum Purchase 94.9 A & B This reliquary, said to have come from a church in Venice, was made in the century in which Venetian glassworkers introduced their famous colorless glass set with opaque white cans vetri a filigrana--literally thread grained glass. This dazzling novel technique became the rage in Europe and was soon imitated north of the alps in facon de Venise. Exhibition History"3000 Jarhre Glaskunst von der Antike bis zum Jugendstil", Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucern, Switzerland, 1981. Illustrated in black and white in the catalogue, No. 666, p. 158. Published ReferencesDavid Battle and Simon Cottle, eds., _Sotheby's Concise Encyclopedia of Glass_ (Boston: Little Brown and Company), p. 66, color ill. "Principales acquisitions des musées en 1994", _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, No. 1514 (March 1995), mentioned on p. 77.