A vessel composed of five pieces of rock crystal and seven mounts. It has a deep egg-shaped bowl with a narrow base broadening at the shoulders, where a short neck emerges from a ring mount to open into a cruciform mouth. There are concave gadroons with mouldings on the upper and lower parts, while in the centre are two lines of intersecting vegetable spirals with seeds. Perched on the edges of these are eagles with their heads turned towards the gaps. Some insects are also visible. Joined to the neck by black enamelled mounts are two handles in the form of schematic mermaids or fantastical creatures with half-wings, women’s breasts, waistbands and short hair with diadems, transformed from the waist down into console legs. An enamelled garland in a rope pattern joins the body to the circular foot decorated with sprays, which ends in an unadorned silver gilt mount.

The unadorned mount on the foot may not be the original, but is already described in the Versailles inventory of 1689. The piece is very similar in proportions to number O92 in the Dauphin’s Treasure, but is rather larger. Angulo found points of comparison with a similar vessel in the Alfred de Rothschild collection. The decoration, divided into three zones, follows patterns common to many Milanese workshops. The birds are similar to those decorating the bottle, O94, at the Prado, and the handles can be related to those on vessels O87, O90 and O91 of the Dauphin’s Treasure, and also those of a piece at the Musée du Louvre, OA 2025. The use of insects relates the vase to Milanese products of the last years of the 16th century and the whole of the 17th, when the motif became more and more common, and even distinctive of certain works assigned to the workshop of Giovanni Battista Metellino, whose decoration is of a coarser quality. The frequent use of corn ears with grains coincides with O109 at the Prado, where there is a representation of an eagle. The two pieces have similarly decorated cases.

Original state: Juan Laurent y Minier, “Amphore, en cristal de roche taillé et gravé, montures d’or avec émaux, XVIe siècle, règne de Henri II”, c. 1879. Museo del Prado, HF0835/42 (L. Arbeteta, in press).