Jim Peake
Head of Department
Lot 11
A very rare façon de Venise engraved armorial tazza, 17th century
29 September 2020, 10:30 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £5,687.50 inc. premium
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A very rare façon de Venise engraved armorial tazza, 17th century
Circular with a flat top upturned slightly at the rim, engraved in diamond-point with the cardinal arms of Coscia, a leg within an oval cartouche surmounted by a broad-brimmed hat (galero) suspending ten tassels (fiocchi), flanked by dense scrolling foliage issuing naturalistic flowers including roses and carnations, two butterflies six birds perched amongst them, the spreading foot with a thin trailed collar and folded footrim, 31.5cm diam, 9.6cm high
Footnotes
Provenance
Lady 'Lili' Maria Elisabeth Augusta Cartwright (née von Sandizell)
Thence by descent to her son, William Cornwallis Cartwright, Aynhoe Park, Oxfordshire
Thence by family descent to the present owner
The Coscia family was a prominent Neapolitan noble family belonging to the seats of Capuana and Nido. It is unclear which cardinal commissioned this tazza, but engraved armorial pieces such as this are particularly rare. A ewer and basin dating to circa 1690-91, bearing beneath a galero the arms of Raimondo Ferretti (1650-1719), Bishop of Recanati-Loreto and later Archbishop of Ravenna, was sold by Christie's on 5 July 2018, lot 108.
The style of the engraving on this tazza has a number of parallels with other engraved examples of Venetian and façon de Venise glass from the 17th century. Whilst this engraving is often crude in its execution, the detail and quality of the present lot is particularly fine. Compare for example the engraved tazza in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession no. 1975.1.1195), illustrated by Dwight Lanmon and David Whitehouse, Glass in the Robert Lehman Collection (1993), pp.90-1, no.27 alongside other similarly decorated pieces.
