According to Laurent’s photographs, the vessel, a high cup made in about 1530-40, consisted of four pieces and four enamelled gold mounts, of which two remain. On the cover, among leaves, spirals and masks, there were three statuettes in white enamel of semi-nude women raising their left arms. Above, a half-length satyr with a Baroque (i.e. irregular) pearl on his breast held the women’s arms with vegetable garlands. According to the 1689 Versailles inventory, the finial it bore from 1815 until its theft consisted of a hemispherical piece of banded agate decorated with twisted gadroons and crowned by a gold flame enamelled in red. In summary, it formed part of a set of similar vessels identified by Alcouffe with those acquired by Francis I in about 1530, which could have been early products from the workshop of the Miseroni family, some of them inventoried as emerald plasma.

The material called emerald plasma was considered the most precious in any collection of gems. Many green minerals were regarded as plasma, and there was considerable confusion in this respect during the Middle Ages, so very few vessels can be clearly identified as being made from this mineral. However, there are a small number of vessels in various European museums (mainly in Madrid, Paris, Vienna and Florence) with the same characteristic, a stone of richly translucent green with tiny lemon-coloured marks, that were made by the same workshop. The stone common to this group is a type of jade now called omphacite.

The Museo del Prado has the phpotograph by Juan Laurent y Minier: Vase en jaspe, pied en pierre blanche vernie, montures d’or et émail, XVIe siècle, règne de Charles IX, c. 1879. Museo del Prado, HF0835/16 (L. Arbeteta, in press).