Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 10, 2010

The Royal Gold Cup is a solid gold-covered cup lavishly decorated with enamel and pearls. It was made for the French royal family at the end of the 14th century, and later belonged to several English monarchs, before spending nearly 300 years in Spain. Since 1892 it has been in the British Museum, and is generally agreed to be the outstanding survival of late medieval French plate. The cup has a cover that lifts off, and once stood on a triangular stand, now lost. The stem of the cup has twice been extended by the addition of cylindrical bands, so that it was originally a good deal shorter, giving the overall shape "a typically robust and stocky elegance." The gold surfaces are decorated with scenes in basse-taille enamel with translucent colours that reflect light from the gold beneath; many areas of gold both underneath the enamel and in the background have engraved and pointillé decoration worked in the gold. Scenes from the life of Saint Agnes run round the top of the cover and the sloping underside of the main body. The symbols of the Four Evangelists run round the foot of the cup, and there are enamel medallions at the centre of the inside of both the cup and the cover. The lower of the two added bands contains enamel Tudor roses on a diapered pointillé background; this was apparently added under Henry VIII. (more...)

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