A Murano Gilt-Metal Mounted ‘Sapphire’ Glass Mirror

Mercury-plate mirror, glass asticciole torciglione, riporti colorati ‘zaffiro’, gilt bronze and copper
Murano
Early 18th century
41 × 30.5 cm (16.1 × 12 in., including the loop)

The frame of this mirror is formed of colored glass parcloses that ‘recall sapphire, topaz, ruby, and emerald, represented by appliqués of colored and fused glass’, the whole enlivened with canes—or asticciole—of twisted glass and with floral motifs in gilt bronze and copper.

First appearing in Venice at the end of the 16th century and produced by Murano glassmakers until the mid-18th (Morazzoni 1951, p. 40), this type of frame was thus intended for the ‘wealthiest and most lavish clientele’. Morazzoni published a similar mirror, preserved in the Museo Vetrario in Murano, which certainly corresponds to the ‘Specchio in cornice dorata e riporti di vetro colorato’ listed as no. 939 in the museum’s catalogue, in the section devoted to Vetri muranesi del secolo XVIII, that is, 18th-century Murano glass. The present mirror may thus be dated to the early years of the 18th century: its twisted asticciole, its quasi-rocaille shells and gilt bronze and copper fusaroles, and its riporti of so-called sapphire or cobalt glass are unquestionably Muranese.

See Giuseppe Marino Urbani de Gheltof, Catalogo del Museo civico vetrario di Murano, Venice, 1888; Giuseppe Morazzoni, Le cornici veneziane, Milan, 1951.