Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum

488 Pages·2011·7.07 MB·English

by  Chris Keene

A University of Sussex DPhil thesis 
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Late Antique Gold Glass in
the British Museum

Daniel Thomas Howells

Volume 1: The Thesis

Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Art History
University of Sussex
July 2010
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University of Sussex
Daniel Thomas Howells Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil)
Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum
Summary
The British Museum holds one of the largest and most important collections of Late
Antique gold glasses in the world, numbering over fifty pieces. However, the collection
has never been fully examined or analysed and the standard reference works on the
medium are well over 100 years old. This thesis uses the British Museum collection to
offer a new and in-depth case study of gold glass which reconsiders the traditional but
untested set of interpretations that have been in circulation since the mid-nineteenth
century and before.
Chapter One examines the history of gold glass scholarship from the late sixteenth
century up until the present day. This serves to demonstrate where many of the
frequently repeated assumptions regarding gold glass have their roots. Chapter Two
gives a brief account of scholarship focusing on the British Museum collection. It then
moves on to examine in detail the formation of the collection itself in the context of
changing nineteenth-century attitudes to Late Antique art. Chapter Three for the first
time defines the various sub-types of gold glass identifiable in the British Museum
collection and incorporates a discussion of the first significant program of scientific
analysis to be carried out on the medium. Chapter Four concentrates on the
manufacture of gold glass and includes a detailed program of experimental
reproduction. Chapters Five to Eight discuss in detail the range of iconography
appearing on the gold glasses in the British Museum collection, reflective of the
medium as a whole. Lastly, after examining the pattern of gold glass distribution and
context, Chapter Nine draws together the preceding analysis to explore the possible
workshop identity and chronology. The final Chapter concludes as to the function of
gold glass in Late Antiquity.
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Declaration

I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in
part to another University for the award of any other degree.

Signature..................................................................
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Preface and acknowledgements

This thesis was completed between the years 2007 to 2010 as part of a fully-funded
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship at the University of Sussex with the British
Museum (Department of Prehistory and Europe). It is a pleasure to hereby
acknowledge my enormous debt of gratitude to my supervisors Professor Liz James
(University of Sussex) and Mr Chris Entwistle (British Museum) for their expert advice
and guidance given unreservedly throughout the course of the project. I am also
extremely grateful to Dr Andrew Meek for a number of very valuable discussions
concerning the potential of scientific applications to ancient glass, and ultimately for
carrying out the scientific analysis of a very large number of the British Museum gold
glasses. Thanks are also due to Professor Julian Henderson for providing unpublished
scientific analysis of gold glasses in the Ashmolean Museum collection. Experimental
glass working was undertaken under the highly enthusiastic guidance of Mr Mark
Taylor and Mr David Hill, who furthermore provided unreservedly their thoughts and
advice, resultant of considerable specialist experience. The practical work itself was
made possible through a series of generously awarded grants from the ‘Glass
Association’, ‘University of Sussex Graduate Centre’ and the ‘Association for the
History of Glass’. I would also to thank Professor Michael McGann for his help in
translating some of the more challenging Latin inscriptions, Mr Stephen Crummy for
producing the profile illustrations of the gold glass in the British Museum collection,
and Dr Eileen Rubery for providing me with photographs of gold glasses from the
Vatican Museum. Needless to say, however, any errors this thesis contains are entirely
my own.
I wish also to gratefully acknowledge the institutions, curators and other staff who
gave me generous access to their collections and provided me with necessary
photographs. In particular, I would like to thank not only the British Museum, but also
the Ashmolean and Victoria and Albert museums. Furthermore, I would also like to
thank the numerous individuals who have contacted me throughout the course of my
work regarding examples of gold glass and related items entering the international art
market. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the importance of resources accessed
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at the British Library, the Warburg Institute, the Institute of Classical Studies, The
Society of Antiquities of London and the National Art Library during the research for
this thesis.
Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to those who have been most influential in
my early studies of Roman archaeology and art history, namely Mr Christopher Forrest,
Mr Alan French, Dr Keith Wilkinson, Prof. Tony King and lastly Dr Hella Eckardt, who
was instrumental in my application for doctoral research at the British Museum. I
would also like to thank my parents, Raymond and Janice, and my sister Elizabeth for
their support and encouragement given to me throughout my seven years of study.
This thesis is dedicated to my beautiful wife Azin for her patience and continual
support, and without whom nothing would have been worthwhile.
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Table of contents

Preface and acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 4
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 19
Chapter 1: A history of gold glass scholarship ................................................................ 23
The later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries .......................................................... 23
Buonarruoti and the eighteenth century .................................................................... 25
The nineteenth century and the work of Garrucci and Vopel .................................... 28
The early twentieth century to Charles Rufus Morey (1959) ..................................... 34
Gold glass scholarship in the wake of Morey, 1960 to the present ............................ 37
Summary and point of departure ................................................................................ 40
Chapter 2: The gold glass collecting history of the British Museum .............................. 42
The British Museum collection and gold glass scholarship ......................................... 42
The collecting history of the British Museum gold glasses ......................................... 46
1854 Bunsen collection (Appendix 1 catalogue nos. 1-10) ..................................... 46
1856 Hamilton collection (Appendix 1 catalogue no. 11) ....................................... 48
1859 Robinson collection (Appendix 1 catalogue nos. 12-16) ................................ 50
1863 Matarozzi collection (Appendix 1 catalogue nos. 17-33) ............................... 51
1868 an 1870 Slade collection (Appendix 1 catalogue nos. 34-37) ......................... 53
1878 Meyrick collection (Appendix 1 catalogue no. 38) ......................................... 54
1881, 1886 and 1893 Franks collection (Appendix 1 catalogue nos. 39-43) ........... 55
1890 Carlisle collection (Appendix 1 catalogue no. 44) .......................................... 57
1898 Tyszkiewicz collection (Appendix 1 catalogue nos. 45-46) ............................. 57
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Old Acquisitions (Appendix 1 catalogue nos. 47-55) ............................................... 59
Fakes and forgeries, marketed and other reproductions (Appendix 1 catalogue
nos. 56-65) ............................................................................................................... 60
The pattern of British Museum acquisitions ............................................................... 66
Chapter 3: Material considerations: morphology and compositional analysis .............. 70
Gold glass sub-types and object morphology ............................................................. 70
Cut and incised technique sandwich-glass vessel bases ......................................... 71
Cut and incised technique gilt-glass plaques ........................................................... 77
Cut and incised technique diminutive medallions and diminutive medallion
studded vessels ........................................................................................................ 79
Brushed technique cobalt blue-backed sandwich-glass portrait medallions .......... 86
Gilt-glass trail inscription sandwich-glass vessel bases ........................................... 88
Scientific analysis ......................................................................................................... 90
Summary and discussion ............................................................................................. 93
Chapter 4: Making gold glass: past attempts and new experimental reproductions .... 96
Reproduction attempts of the recent past ................................................................. 96
My own program of experimental reproduction ...................................................... 107
Cut and incised technique sandwich-glass vessels and gilded-glass plaques ....... 108
The St Severin bowl and other cut and incised technique diminutive medallion
studded vessels ...................................................................................................... 118
Brushed technique sandwich-glass portrait medallions and gilt-glass trail
sandwich-glass vessels ........................................................................................... 122
Conclusions drawn from the experimental manufacture of gold glass .................... 124
Chapter 5: The iconography of the British Museum gold glasses: secular portraits .... 127
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Naturalistic portraiture (Appendix 1 no. 44) ............................................................. 129
Portrait-style depictions of single individuals (Appendix 1 nos. 12, 14 & 37) .......... 133
Portrait-style depictions of ‘married couples’ (Appendix 1 nos. 3, 19, 27 & 45) ...... 143
Portrait-style depictions of ‘family groups’ (Appendix 1 nos. 21 & 23) .................... 155
General trends observable in gold glass portraits and portrait-style depictions of
secular people ........................................................................................................... 160
Chapter 6: The iconography of the British Museum gold glasses: portrait-style
depictions of male saints .............................................................................................. 164
Individual male saints (Appendix 1 nos. 27, 29 & 47) ............................................... 165
Paired male saints (Appendix 1 nos. 2, 20, 24, 28, 38, 40 & 43) ............................... 173
Multiple male saints (Appendix 1 nos. 11, 13, 25 & 49) ........................................... 182
Saints and secular people (Appendix 1 no. 1) ........................................................... 189
General trends observable on gold glass portrait-style depictions of male saints ... 191
Chapter 7: The iconography of the British Museum gold glasses: Biblical and
apocryphal episodic imagery ........................................................................................ 194
The Fall of Man (Appendix 1 nos. 39 & 53) ............................................................... 196
The Sacrifice of Isaac (Appendix 1 no. 39) ................................................................. 201
Moses and (or) Peter striking the rock (Appendix 1 no. 18) ..................................... 203
The three Hebrews in the fiery furnace (Appendix 1 nos. 8 & 39) ........................... 205
Daniel in the den of lions (Appendix 1 nos. 30 & 39) ................................................ 207
Susanna and the elders (Appendix 1 no. 39) ............................................................. 209
Daniel and the dragon of Babylon (Appendix 1 nos. 10 & 17) .................................. 213
The story of Jonah (Appendix 1 nos. 9, 39 & 55) ...................................................... 216
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The raising of Lazarus and the healing of the woman with the issue of blood: a
possible conflation of New Testament episodes? (Appendix 1 nos. 7 & 33) ............ 220
The reconstructed iconography of the St Severin bowl (Appendix 1 no. 39) ........... 223
General trends observable on gold glass representations of Biblical and apocryphal
episodic imagery ........................................................................................................ 227
Chapter 8: The iconography of the British Museum gold glasses: Jewish, pagan and
miscellaneous secular subjects and inscriptions .......................................................... 230
Jewish Symbolism (Appendix 1 no. 26) ..................................................................... 231
The twelve labours of Hercules (Appendix 1 no. 54) ................................................ 235
Miscellaneous secular subjects (Appendix 1 nos. 46 & 52) ...................................... 237
Inscriptions unaccompanied by visual embellishment (Appendix 1 nos. 5, 34, 42 &
50) .............................................................................................................................. 242
Overview and discussion of the general iconographic trends observable in gold glass
as illustrated by the British Museum collection ........................................................ 244
Chapter 9: Workshop identity, distribution and context, and the date of Late Antique
gold glass ....................................................................................................................... 248
Distribution and context............................................................................................ 248
Gold glass workshop identity .................................................................................... 258
The date of Late Antique gold glass .......................................................................... 263
Overview, summary and discussion of gold glass distribution and context, workshop
identity and chronology. ........................................................................................... 271
Chapter 10: Conclusions: the functions of gold glass in Late Antiquity ........................ 274
The value and primary usage of gold glass ............................................................... 274
Secondary use of gold glass in Late Antiquity ........................................................... 288
General conclusions .................................................................................................. 293