Chalice

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

High-ranking church officials would have used this flamboyant Gothic chalice on special occasions, and the object’s colorful and glittering appearance would have been in divine harmony with the multicolored sunlight coming through the stained glass windows. The grandeur of the delicate filigree enameling became associated with the term modo transilvano, or, “in the Transylvanian fashion.” Along with bejeweled examples, ostentatiously colorful, enameled chalices, such as this one, were the pride of church treasuries in Central and Southeastern Europe and Northern Italy, including Venice, which had a common border with the fifteenth-century Hungarian Kingdom. The majority of ecclesiastical silver was destroyed during the Reformation in the sixteenth- century. The chalice bears the date 1462 and names the otherwise unknown donor Nicolas Cynowec. The object itself is equally illustrious as its distinguished provenance, from the collection of Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild in Vienna.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art