Cup decorated with polychrome mythological scenes enframed within dynamically shaped reserved panels. It presents a white-paste body with relatively few impurities and vitreous lead-glazing.

This cup presents the highly unusual characteristic - indeed, in terms of knowledge to date, it is a unique piece within the Doccia Manufactory - of having the very elegant decoration executed on the biscuit in the main portion of the cup, whereas the upper and lower portions are glazed and also project outwards in comparison to the central portion of the body of the cup, which thus is effectively hollowed out.

This arrangement of shapes suggest that the piece may not have been finished, and that something was to be overlaid on the decoration. For it would be strange to imagine that such carefully executed and richly ornate decoration was destined to remain exposed on the biscuit, since the latter tends to deteriorate rapidly over time, especially if it comes into frequent contact with hands and fingers.

I would exclude the hypothesis that this may have been a double-walled object; rather, I would be inclined to consider it either as a test piece, and therefore an unicum (cf. Biancalana A., in La Manifattura Toscana dei Ginori, Catalogue of the 1998 Pisa Exhibition, pp. 25 e 26), or as an attempt to produce a work with a very showy, even spectacular, effect. If this conjecture is correct, one may further propose that it was designed to emulate attempts already undertaken in Meissen, where, for instance, a vase had been executed in 1730 whose lower portion represented a bird-cage with metal bars through which not only the decoration but even the modeled shapes of two birds could be seen perfectly. (Menzhausen I., 1988, f. 69). It cannot be doubted that the Doccia craftsmen certainly possessed the technical expertise to overlay a "mask" made of precious metal, as the Silversmithing Laboratory had already been in operation in Doccia ever since the very earliest years of the Manufactory (from 1744 onwards); furthermore, Carlo Ginori's never concealed ambition to rival the Manufactory of Saxony in stature and renown could have prompted this experiment. Such a mask could easily have been fitted between the upper and lower protruding portions.

One of the two scenes represents Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa, standing before three soldiers who avert their gaze, for anyone who looked Perseus in the eye would be turned into stone. The other scene depicts a woman with two young children, sobbing as she peers into a pond, while other tearful characters look on, a subject which may be linked to the myth of Ulysses.

The pictorial quality is quite high, and it may not be excessive to attribute the decoration to the hand of Karl Wendelin Anreiter himself (as suggested by Luca Melegati), since elongated faces and figures as well as subtler tones were among his distinctive characteristics. [AB]