Gold tazza with turquoises and rubies
1580 - 1630. Gold, Ruby, Turquoise. Room 079BA vessel with a diminished arch profile, somewhat everted, and a round mouth, standing on a ring support. It is coated on the inside with a fine sheet of gold, and on the outside with a mosaic formed by 791 fragments of turquoise. The pattern consists of a band with a salient moulding running around the lip, and a latticed field of stalks, leaves and flowers, similar to that on vessel O-70 of the Dauphin’s Treasure but here denser, with four engraved gold mandorlas and fleurons with a structure similar to those of the low tazza, O-71, and the perfume pan stolen in 1918. Set into each of the flowers is a ruby cabochon, 160 in all, with the gold worked in accordance with the Kurdan technique. The base presents nielloed decoration with a high-quality arabesque pattern. Similar pieces are preserved at the Louvre, one of which came from the Mazarino collection, and also at the British Museum and the Topkapi Museum.
The different inventories of the Dauphin’s Treasure describe this piece as a double tazza, perhaps because of its double coating. Curiously, however, the imprint left inside the case suggests it might have had another tazza as a lid.
The nielloed pattern on the base is related to 17th century pieces like the reliquary of the mantle of Mohammed, preserved at the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul.
The Museo del Prado has the photograph by Juan Laurent y Minier, Tasse moresque, à fleurons avec des grenats enchâsses, XVIe siècle, règne de François 1er, c. 1879. Museo del Prado, HF0835/23 (L. Arbeteta, in press).