An important Venetian enamelled and gilded tazza, first quarter 16th century

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

This tazza belongs to a distinctive group of vessels all painted with medallions in a very similar style and palette dating to the first quarter of the 16th century. A small number of these include deer or stags. See for example the jug with a stag to one side and a lion to the other in the Victoria and Albert Museum (accession no. 681-1884), illustrated by Barovier Mentasti et al., Mille Anni di Arte del Vetro a Venezia (1982), pp.102-4, no.112, the honeycomb-moulded tazza with a standing stag from the Salomon De Rothschild collection in the Louvre (accession no. OA 1976), and the large pitcher with a recumbent stag from the M Émile Gavet Collection sold by Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1897, lot 585 (present whereabouts unknown).

For a tazza of identical form with a similar border to the rim, see that with a medallion of a recumbent doe to the centre in the Corning Museum of Glass (accession no. 2002.3.36). Another of very similar form with a swan or pelican is illustrated by Erwin Baumgartner, Reflets de Venise (2015), pp.57-9, no.11, where the dating of tazzas such as this is also discussed. Compare also to the tazza with a pelican or swan in the Victoria and Albert Museum (accession no. C.2475-1910).

Other tazzas painted with female deer include a rib-moulded example in the British Museum (accession no. S.377) illustrated by Hugh Tait, The Golden Age of Venetian Glass (1979), p.29, no.5, one in the former Royal Scottish Museum, illustrated in the Journal of Glass Studies, vol.5 (1963), p.147, no.29, and a bowl with a standing doe in a quatrefoil cartouche sold by Sotheby's on 26 May 1981, lot 204. Tazzas of different form with medallions of other animals all painted beneath a sun in a strikingly similar style are cited by Dwight Lanmon and David Whitehouse, Glass in the Robert Lehman Collection (1993), p.33, and by Baumgartner (2015), p.59.

The treatment of the grass, painted in bright green with tiny lines or shapes painted in black, together with the rendition of the sun with distinctive linear dashed rays, is consistent with all of the vessels aforementioned. It is therefore probable that they were decorated in the same workshop in Venice, perhaps even by the same hand. The treatment of the grass can be further compared to the Venetian enamelled goblet sold by Bonhams on 21 May 2014, lot 35. It is perhaps interesting to note that with the exception of the jug with the stag and lion in the Victoria and Albert Museum, all of the recorded vessels differ slightly from the present lot in the addition of water to the foreground.