The Italian Renaissance produced some of the greatest artwork of all time, but its glassware doesn’t get the spotlight that it should. It was valued throughout Europe and beyond from the late Middle Ages into the Early Modern period for its beauty and unique qualities.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, glassmaking went into abeyance in Europe, but came back into greater magnificence than ever before in the city-state of Venice, particularly on the island of Murano. There, in 1291, the Venitian government concentrated almost all of the highly regulated glass industry. Glassmaking requires enormous amounts of wood to burn for the furnace (all this had to be imported to the island), and was a constant fire hazard — so keeping everything focused on an island away from Venice proper made sense. But the sequestration was also to prevent secrets of glassmaking from leaving the area. In fact, the glassmakers, although well paid and with good working conditions, were forbidden by law from leaving Murano.
And unique this glassware was indeed. One innovation was the creation of “cristallo” by the most famous glassmaker in Medieval history, Angelo Barovier (ca 1400-1460 — you can see a cup that may have been made by him in the third slide). Cristallo was a thin, clear glass (like the 17th century Venitian wineglass on the first slide) made possible by Barovier’s special processing of plant ash used during glassmaking. The plant ash provided the “flux”, which was an ingredient that lowered the temperature necessary for the silica to melt (silica was the main material).
Venitian glass beads were also famed at this time, and have a sadder part in human history. So unusual were their colors, and their size so portable, that many indigenous peoples valued them and were duped into exchanging land or captured people for them by European traders.
In fact, last year in 2021, archaeologists in Alaska discovered several blue Venitian glass beads (see second slide) which — astonishingly — date to decades before Columbus’ voyage of 1492. Probably these beads followed a trading path across the Mediterranean and Silk Road and eventually the Bering Sea.
Source: @news.artnet.com “In an astounding discovery, archaeologists in Alaska have uncovered Italian glass that came to America before Columbus’,” Feb 18, 2021, Artnet News. Image Lester Ross, courtesy of Robin Mills., www.metmuseum.org, “Wineglass 17th century”, accession number 83.6.4., “Glass as a material in Renaissance Venice” _The Techniques if Renaissance Venitian Glassworking_, Corning Museum of Glass, William Gudenrath, Feb 2016
