The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 21, 2025

Marriage 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.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1955.70
Location: 118 Italian Renaissance

Description

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).
  • Baron Maurice de Rothschild [1881-1957], Chateau de Pregny.
  • Francis, Henry S. Venetian Tradition: Catalogue of the Exhibition. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1956. Mentioned: p. 89 library.clevelandart.org
    Foote, Helen. "An Enameled glass Marriage Beaker." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 43, no. 6 (June 1956): 118-120. Mentioned: p. 118; Reproduced: p. 119 www.jstor.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 228 archive.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 88 archive.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 88 archive.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 101 archive.org
    Mack, Rosamond E. Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Mentioned & reproduced: pp. 120-1, fig. 126 library.clevelandart.org
    Lindow, James. The Renaissance Palace in Florence: Magnificence and Splendour in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Mentioned & reproduced: p. 159, fig. 38 library.clevelandart.org
  • Mille Anni di Arte del Vetro a Venezia (A Thousand Years of Glass Art in Venice). Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Venice, Italy (July 24-December 8, 1982).
    No existing exhibition history
    Venetian Glass. The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY (organizer) (June 1, 1958-August 31, 1957).
  • {{cite web|title=Marriage Beaker|url=false|author=|year=late 1400s|access-date=21 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1955.70