An exceptional sardonyx cup with enamelled gold mounts - Lot 8

An exceptional sardonyx cup with enamelled gold mounts The shell-shaped cup is made from a fragment of the base of a Byzantine fluted sardonyx cup. It is surmounted by a young naked Neptune in white enamelled gold holding a small dolphin in his right hand. The left hand probably once held a trident, now missing. The deity is seated on a tiered, quadrangular stepped gold platform, his right leg bent and his left overhanging the cup. The white, pink and black enamelled gold mount joins his seat to the leg of the cup via a wide acanthus leaf decorated with small gold flowers (traces of translucent red enamel on the petals). On what was originally the flat base of the Byzantine cup, a gold hoop helps to maintain the decoration. The stem of the cup is formed by a spherical finial moulded in sardonyx between two gilded rings from which a leafy corolla of white, pink and black enamel (and translucent green enamel for the lower part only) emerges. The ogee form base is decorated around the rim with large descending white and pink acanthus leaves revealing small gold flowers (red translucent enamel no longer present) with green translucent enamel leaves. One element may be missing from the back of the figure on the platform that forms the seat, and there are some losses of enamel on the acanthus décor of the mounts of the cup. The cup: Byzantium, 9th-11th Century The mounts: Paris, circa 1665 (Atelier ‘blanc et rose’) Height: 16.2 cm. Length: 11.1 cm. Width: 9.4 cm. Weight: 302 g Comparative bibliography: - D. Alcouffe, Les Gemmes de la Couronne, Paris, 2001. - O. Casazza et al. Il Tesoro dei Medici al Museo degli Argenti – Oggetti preziosi in cristallo e pietre dure nelle collezioni di Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 2009. This precious cup can easily be added to the corpus of works from the ‘white and pink workshop’. In addition to the acanthus and the colours of the enamels, it features a decoration that ‘does not belong to the mount itself, but [...] is made up of enamelled gold appliques attached to it with folded-over points’ (cf. Alcouffe, p. 423). It should therefore be compared with several pieces from this workshop, of which a number use Byzantine sardonyx from the same period, conserved in the Galerie d'Apollon in the Musée du Louvre from the collections of Louis XIV (inv. MR 114, MR 124, N 290, MR 126, MR 122, cf. Alcouffe, cat. 5, 6, 17, 27, 28, 29). In addition to the acanthus and florets found on these pieces, it is worth noting the great similarity between the mounting of the foot of our cup and that of the foot of the small Byzantine ewer in the Louvre (inv. N 290, cf. Alcouffe, cat. 17, pp. 70, 78-80). The ‘shell’ shape of the cup can be compared with several similar examples, including the Byzantine sardonyx cup also in the Louvre (MR 123). For a Byzantine cup from the same period with fluted decoration identical to ours, there is one in the Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence (inv. 556, cf. Casazza, p. 244, no. 116).