Beaker with Polo Players
Unknown · c. 1250
A tall flaring glass beaker, thin as paper and covered with coloured enamels and gold. Around the body ride horsemen swinging long-handled mallets: a game of polo, the favourite sport of medieval Islamic courts. Above them runs a band of Arabic script, and it is a grand one: glory to our master the sultan, the king, the learned, the exalted, the holy warrior, the defender of the frontiers, sultan of Islam and of the Muslims. Turn your attention to the tiny scale of the painting. Enamel colours were applied to the finished glass and fused on in a second firing, a technique thirteenth-century Syrian glassmakers mastered as no one else did.
The beaker was made in Syria around twelve fifty, and its later history is remarkable. It was found in Italy, under the altar of the church of Santa Margherita at Orvieto, a church that no longer exists, where it had presumably been walled up as a relic container. The Louvre bought the beaker in nineteen hundred and eight. The inscription was read by the curator Gaston Migeon in nineteen twenty-two.
Did You Know? The beaker was discovered under the altar of a church in Orvieto, Italy, where it had probably been used as a reliquary.
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