Eleanor of Aquitaine Vase
Unknown · Vase 500-700 (Sasanian or post-Sasanian Persia); mount before 1147
Few objects can claim a chain of owners like the one recorded on the base. The rock crystal body, carved with a honeycomb of hollows, was made in Persia in the sixth or seventh century or somewhat later. It belonged to Imad al-Dawla, the Muslim king of Saragossa, who gave it to Duke William the Ninth of Aquitaine in eleven twenty after the battle of Cutanda. It passed to his granddaughter Eleanor of Aquitaine, who gave it to her husband King Louis the Seventh of France. Louis gave it to Abbot Suger, who had the mount made and offered it to the saints of Saint-Denis before eleven forty seven. The nielloed inscription on the foot says exactly this.
The mount is gilded silver. The foot rises in four bands: the inscription, filigree set with gems, fleurons and filigree, and a plain strip. The neck alternates smooth, filigreed and jewelled rings, and the stones sit in toothed settings between pairs of pearls. Look for the unusual double, beaded filigree wires. Seized at the Revolution, the vase reached the museum on the fifth of December seventeen ninety three, one of three vases of Abbot Suger in the Louvre.
Did You Know? The vase passed from a Muslim king to a crusading duke, a queen, a king of France and an abbot, and the inscription names every one of them.
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