Presented by: Lisa Goldenberg Stoppato, Medici Archive Project Fellow (Image Credit: Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence; by kind permission of the Ministery of Cultural Properties and Activities, Italy, which reserves all rights including that of subsequent reproduction.

Click for large image

DOCUMENT CITATION:
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato 4949, fol. 810
(Entry 2937 in the "Documentary Sources" database.)

TRANSLATION:
[...] The three chests of drinking glasses arrived just when I was beginning to wonder whether they had suffered the same ill fate as those ships that were seized by the Turks. The timing of their arrival was perfect, considering the present illness of the King [Felipe III of Spain]. If the King hadn’t been ill, I would have sent this glassware to the Prioress of the Convent of the Encarnacíon [Mariana Manzanedo y Maldonando, also known as Mariana de San José] so that she could present them to His Majesty when he takes his children [Crown Prince Felipe IV, Princes Fernando, Carlos and María Ana] to see her. However, I decided to waste no time going through such channels since glassware is a great amusement for sick people. Therefore, I sent the King some of the best by way of Doña Leonor [Pimentel] and have heard from her and others that the King greatly appreciated them and has received no better amusement during his illness. He examined these drinking glasses one by one and tried them out, now and again distributing some of them to his children as he thought best, then he had the rest carefully stored away. I will give away the remaining glasses as seems appropriate, since this is truly one of the most curious and esteemed presents that we can bestow. There is nothing more desirable than these for men. However, it would have been well to have had more of those water glasses for the ladies who do not drink wine, as long as they are made of pure and very clear glass [...]

TRANSCRIPTION:
[...] Arrivarono le tre casse de bicchieri, mentre che indugiando tanto dubitava che havessero corso la mala fortuna di quei vascelli, che sono stati presi da turchi, e sono venuti a punto a proposito per l'indisposizione del Re [Felipe III de Austria], senza la quale gli harei mandati alla Priora [Mariana Manzanedo y Maldonando, known as Mariana de San José] dell'Incarnazione [Monasterio de la Encarnación] perchè ne facesse la mostra et il presente a S. M.à quando va quivi co' figliuoli [Felipe IV, Fernando, Carlos and María Ana de Austria], ma essendo a malati intrattenimento grande quello de bicchieri, mi risolsi a non perder tempo in circuiti e ne mandai al Re per mezzo di Dogna Leonora [Pimentel] una quantità de' più belli, che da lei, et da altri ancora ho sentito che sono stati gratissimi al Re, che non ha havuto maggiore intrattenimento in questa sua indisposizione, havendoli tutti considerati ad uno ad uno, fattili provare, e scompartitene a figliuoli quello che gli è parso di mano in mano più a proposito, et il resto fatto serbare diligentemente. Degli altri ne vo facendo qualche regalo secondo che mi pare bene, che in vero qui è uno de più curiosi e stimati presenti che si possa fare, et per gli huomini non si poteva desiderar più, ma per le dame che non bevono vino, si sarebbe desiderato un po' più quantità di quei vasi da bever acqua però di vetro puro e nettissimo. [...]

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
This gift of Medici glassware might well have cheered King Felipe III of Spain on his sickbed. However, it didn’t cure him and he died 16 days later on March 31, 1621 [See Mediceo del Principato 4949, fol.821; entry 8582 in the "Documentary Sources" database.] As the King’s illness progressed (beginning with an abscess on the cheek, followed by a high fever) he had been subjected to seven courses of bloodletting, which presumably placed him beyond the reach of even such thoughtful and timely gestures.

Illness was a gift-giving occasion in seventeenth-century Spain. When Infanta María Ana de Austria had a sore throat in the spring of 1622, her brother King Felipe IV and her sister-in-law Queen Élisabeth de Bourbon regaled her with "noble gifts" [MdP 4951, unpaginated; 13 March 1622; entry 8488.] Glassware was viewed as a distracting and entertaining novelty and was thus considered particularly suitable for rallying the sick and infirm. Only a few months after the death of Felipe III, the Florentine embassy dispatched yet another shipment of such items to Felipe IV’s wife Élisabeth de Bourbon who was recovering from her first, tragic childbirth. As Ambassador Giuliano de’ Medici di Castellina observed, "I sent the remaining drinking glasses to the Queen in her current indisposition and they proved most acceptable, being esteemed a great curiosity here... Such things are highly-prized as gifts by princes and other gentlemen, who often ask me for them and then thank me profusely" [MdP 4949, fol. 1026; 20 October 1621; entry 8027.]

Cosimo I de’ Medici officially opened the Medici glassworks in 1569 at the Uffizi Palace (then still in construction), under the direction of a Venetian master glassblower named Bortolo. Since the Republic of Venice strictly forbade the exportation of this secret technology, Bortolo had to plot a clandestine escape to Florence during the annual summer shutdown of his glassworks "alli Tre Mori." It appears from the documentation, however, that Prince Francesco (later Grand Duke Francesco I) was already one step ahead of his father, having built his own glassmaking facility in Florence in 1566. Francesco later transferred this activity to his favorite Florentine retreat, the Casino di San Marco, where he could easily watch the work at first hand. For many years, the Casino di San Marco continued to be the chief center of Medici glass production, although a separate shop for finishing glassware "a lume di lucerna" ("by lamplight", a technique for shaping and twisting the material over a controlled flame) was later established back at the Uffizi. A second Medici glassworks was opened in Pisa in 1592, during the reign of Francesco’s brother Ferdinando I de’ Medici. [MdP 5031, fol. 348, 19 May 1592; entry 4079 and MdP 283, fol. 126, 24 August 1592; entry 1283.]

Cosimo II and his son Ferdinando II maintained their family’s interest in glassmaking. Cosimo II had a furnace built in the Boboli gardens directly behind the Pitti Palace, his chief official residence. During the summers of 1618 and 1619, the Boboli glassworks were manned by Venetian artisans on vacation from their jobs in Murano. These same glassblowers came to work for Cosimo II again in the summer of 1620, but at the main Medici glassworks in the Casino di San Marco. Until his death in February 1621, Cosimo II personally conceived many of these glass creations, which he had translated into working designs by the painter Jacopo Ligozzi. The glassware described in the present document, which was sent to Spain from the Medici court in March of 1621, might well have been visualized by Cosimo II, drawn by Ligozzi, blown by Venetian glassworkers during the summer of 1620 and then finished "a lume di lucerna" the following winter (a four-stage process that is amply documented in the archives.)

What was the special fascination of glassware for sophisticated patrons in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? In the years before invention of plastics and other easily ductile materials, molten glass could be drawn, twisted, molded and fluted into virtually any shape—however bizarre, attenuated or fantastic. Not only did its properties of clarity and transparency make it unique, but for those of a mannerist or baroque poetic sensibility, glass seemed to contradict the most fundamental laws of nature. However glittering and rechérché the results, the essential ingredient is sand, a humble and opaque material of little inherent value. Glass is both the most pliable of substances (when hot) and the most hard and fragile (when cold.) In fact, we know from the correspondence that these delicate Medici creations had a less-than-even chance of surviving intact the long overland-sea-overland journey to the Spanish Court. On 20 October 1621, for example, the Tuscan Ambassador urgently requested replacements, since in the previous shipment "only a few of the most exquisite pieces...came through in sound condition" [MdP 4949, fol. 1026; entry 8027.]

RESEARCH QUESTION:
Was Ambassador Giuliano de’ Medici correct in implying that Spanish noblewomen favored water over wine in the seventeenth century? A few years earlier, Giuliano’s predecessor Orazio della Rena also invoked the "water glasses for women" formula, proposing a gift to Queen Margarete von Habsburg-de Austria (wife of Felipe III) of "large glass vases for flowers and those glasses for drinking water and bowls of fanciful design and curious workmanship." [Relazion ultima segreta fatta al ser.mo Granduca Ferdinando primo [...] l’anno 1605, BNCF, Ms. Magl.Cl. XXXV, cod. 796, c.48 recto.] Was there perhaps a point of etiquette or social custom at stake? If you have evidence for or against this assertion, please share it with The Medici Archive Project at: info@medici.org

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION on Medici glassmaking, see: Detlef Heikamp, Studien zur Mediceischen Glaskunst. Archivalien, Entwurfszeichnungen, Gläser und Scherben, Kunsthistoriches Institut in Florenz (1986.)