Boat-shaped jasper tazza
1600 - 1630.Room 079B
The vessel, carved in a single piece, consists of a jasper tazza with an oval mouth and boat-shaped profile. Until 1918 it had a simple mount of handles in the form of dolphins joined by openwork half moons. All that remains of it is a ring on the base, which cannot be seen when the tazza is in its normal position.
This missing mount, whose appearance and volumes are known to us only through historic photographs and the space left in the case, had incised lines marking the nerves of the leaves. Arbeteta wrote that they were probably made in some Northern European workshop to judge by analogous examples, such as a butter dish with similar decoration dated 1643 that is preserved in the collections of Rosenborg Castle, inv. no. 1-122. It is attributed to Caspar Herbach (c. 1600-1664), who came to the Danish court from Saxony in 1642.
The butter dish mentioned above, attributed to Caspar Herbach (c. 1600-1664) and similar to the tazza in the Prado, was made for Christian IV, whose cipher appears on the lid along with the date of 1643 and the tetragram with the name of “Yahve” in Hebrew. Like the piece in the Prado, the body is also a low quatrilobulate cup of what is catalogued as Saxon serpentine, resting on four feet of the same stone. Although richer and more complex, the use of openwork leaves on the sides recalls piece O-58 in the Dauphin’s Treasure, with whose possible date of execution, 1643, it coincides. The material itself, and even the Baroque decoration of the red leather case, seem to point to the same possibility.
The Museo del Prado has the photograph by Juan Laurent y Minier, Tasse ovale, avec anses rapportées, agate et jaspe, montures d’argent doré, XVIe siècle, règne de Charles IX, c. 1879. Museo del Prado, HF0835/17.
