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Marriage Beaker
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
By the mid-1400s the word lattimo had come to mean glass made milk-like by the addition of opacifying materials, such as an oxide of tin. It was imitative of Chinese porcelain. Only fourteen surviving pieces of lattimo vessels are recorded. These beakers may have been intended as betrothal or wedding gifts. This one is enameled with idealized portrait heads of a young man and woman. Such portrait heads of young women were also a feature of Italian Maiolica, especially those at Deruta (see "love dishes" in Gallery 219).
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineMarriage Beaker, late 1400s. Italy, Venice. Opaque glass (milk glass or lattimo), enameled; overall: 10.2 x 7.4 cm (4 x 2 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1955.70
