[stag_toggle style=”normal” title=”Piece details” state=”closed”]Bavarian workshop;
4/4 of the 19th century;
colored mass-blown glass, free-blown,
pilled, hand-painted with enamel;
dimensions: H – 36.5 cm; D – 21.5 cm[/stag_toggle]
A special place in the history of German glass art from the end of the 19th century is occupied by pieces decorated by painting with polychrome enamels. Enamel is a vitreous material, based on metal oxides and vitrifiable fluxes, poor in silicon dioxide and rich in lead oxide and borax. The process of enameling glass is similar to that applied to ceramics and includes two basic stages: painting and firing.
In terms of decorations, imitators rather than innovators, German glassmakers adapt to national taste the influences from neighboring areas: Bohemia or Silesia. The situation is completely different if we refer to the techniques of color chemistry, in which Germany, and especially Bavaria, excels. Since the 17th century, this area has been, and remains today, the most important producer and exporter of precious colored enamel powders for glass, which are used in hot decoration workshops throughout Europe.
In accordance with the aesthetic canons of the time, the models created are part of the historicist trend and are inspired by the iconography of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: female or male characters in sumptuous costumes, wearing noble or chivalric insignia, heraldic coats of arms, decorations with symbolic value, inscriptions or historical characters.
It is an olive-green glass cup, painted with polychrome enamel with the portrait of Rudolf II of Habsburg (1552-1612), Holy Roman Emperor of German descent, King of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia. A controversial figure, considered a patron of the arts and the occult sciences, Rudolf II attempted to create a unified Christian empire, thus becoming an important figure in the panoply of Renaissance figures.