Heliotrope cup with two gold masks
1600 - 1650. Bloodstone, Gold Room 079BVessel made up of three pieces of heliotrope and four gold mounts. The bowl has an oblong mouth and four broad gadroons separated by four narrower ones. It opens out towards the middle to become slightly bell-shaped. At each end, two male masks in chased gold hold a rope pattern ring in their mouths. It is attached to the stem by means of a gold mount with incised floral decoration and C-shaped adornments. The bulbous stem is decorated with helicoidal gadroons and with foliage at the base. A gold ring joins this structure to the foot, with a gadrooned socle and a bell-shaped plinth meeting the ends of the gadroons. In 1918, a gold mount that ran all around the lip, decorated with incised garlands of flowers, was torn off, causing great damage. Another part that disappeared was the flange on the foot, with denticles, gadroons and rope patterns, which gave the vessel different proportions.
Angulo pointed out the stylistic concidence with vessel O49 of the Dauphin’s Treasure, patent especially in the knop and the material used, heliotrope. The proportions of both vessels are Baroque, though restrained, and the detail of the gadroons recalls the Milanese tradition. Mounts
The mount of the lip, with decoration engraved in the gold like that of O23 and the vanished cover of O30, recalls different examples made in France, especially Paris. Although the masks evoke Italian taste, Arbeteta pointed out that there was another piece in the Dauphin’s Treasure that may have had some relation to this one, with a gold mount following classicist designs similar to some of Jean Bérain’s projects for fountains and decorative panels.
The Museo del Prado has the phptograph by Juan Laurent y Minier´s photography: Coupe lobulée, montures d’or ciselé, XVIe siècle, règne de Henri III , hacia 1879, Museo del Prado, HF0835/2 (L. Arbeteta, in press).