Oval heliotrope platter
Ca. 1610. Gilt-copper, Enamel, Bloodstone, Gold, Pearls, Silver gilt Room 079BOval platter made up of eighteen pieces of heliotrope joined by a gilt bronze frame and a recessed central body with cruciform motif around a central oval. Attached to the structure of the mounting are several overlays of enamelled gold, some now lost, adorned with thirty-seven pearls, of which twenty-five remain today. There is a similar platter at the Musée du Louvre, which suggests that it might have been exchanged for the polygonal platter O24, which accompanies this set. It forms part of the set of pieces from O24 to O27 at the Prado.
Some of the gold overlays of the mounting and about a dozen pearls are currently missing. The state of the work in the 19th century can be seen through the photography of Juan Laurent y Minier, "Vase agate sardoine, montures d’or avec émaux et pierreries, XVIe siècle, règne de Henri II", c. 1879, Museo del Prado, HF0835/32 (L. Arbeteta, in press).
