A female figure is seated on a pale blue carpet spread over the back of a gigantic bird. With the reins in her left hand, she seems to be directing the huge creature.
Johann Melchior Dinglinger, who created this object, identified the female figure as Medea, a princess and one of the great sorceresses of the ancient world. She used her knowledge of magic to help the Argonaut Jason steal the Golden Fleece. The bowl, carved from sardonyx in the shape of a bird with a dragon’s head, was probably produced in the Saracchi gem-cutting workshop in Milan around 1590. Vessels in the form of birds and dragons were one of their specialities.
The bowl must have been damaged, which is why it was reworked by Dinglinger. He positioned the wings on the body of the animal. The bird’s powerful legs and the base of the bowl, with its forest floor teeming with animals, are very realistic. The bird’s neck also received a new form: the head of a faun, made of embossed gold.
By depicting Medea, Dinglinger chose a motive from the ancient world and, at the same time, one with a relevance to August the Strong. Medea helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece. And Catholicism’s most prestigious chivalric order was the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1697, the year of August the Strong’s coronation, he was made a knight of that order. The monogram which Medea is holding has a crown above it, and the letters A-R, which stand for Augustus Rex, King August.
- Material & Technik
- Sardonyx, Gold, Email, Diamanten
- Abmessungen
- H 29,8 cm, B 23,8 cm, T 14,3 cm
- Museum
- Grünes Gewölbe
- Ort & Datierung
- Steinschnitt: Mailand, um 1590 / Goldschmiedefassung: Dresden, wohl kurz vor 1709
- Inventarnummer
- VI 93