Rock crystal drinking vessel with birds, fruit and scroll-shaped handles
1590 - 1610. Rock crystal / Hyaline quartz, Enamel, Gold.Room 079B
A vessel made up of four pieces of rock crystal and three enamelled gold mounts. The bowl is a piece with a diminished arch profile, oval mouth, a decoration of concave double gadroons on the lower part, and eight large gadroons on the upper half that give the surface an undulating appearance. It has engraved vegetable and fruit motifs distributed in festoons with ribbons, which alternate with patterns formed by two fantastic birds facing each other over an urn and separated by plant motifs. In the middle of the broadest part, nearly on the rim, are two scrolled handles with low-relief leaves. The piece is very similar to O86 and O88 in the Dauphin’s Treasure, differing from them only in its measurements and the number of mounts.
Although this type of object is referred to in the Spanish inventories as a “taza” or “vaso”, Angulo used the term “bernegales” (porringers) with some reason, since they greatly resemble the vessels of that name made in earthenware or metal, the latter generally of silver. According to the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, a “bernegal” is a “cup for drinking, with a wide mouth and undulating form”.
Original state: Juan Laurent y Minier, “Tasse ovale, cristal de roche taillé et gravé, montures d’or avec émail, XVIe siècle, règne de Henri III”, c. 1879. Museo del Prado, HF0835/39.
Arbeteta Mira, Letizia, El tesoro del Delfín: alhajas de Felipe V recibidas por herencia de su padre Luis, Gran Delfín de Francia, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2001, p.176
