The Chalice of Manuel Kantakouzenos
Many art historians tend to overlook the decorative arts, dismissing them as mere craft. But it is not so: often these are objects of great beauty and artistry, charged with important symbolic meaning, and telling us much about the state of the world at the time of their manufacture. Just such a work of art is this chalice of Manuel Kantakouzenos (the name refers to the family’s place of origin), dating from the late fourteenth century and now housed on Mount Athos. It stands seven inches high and measures just over nine inches wide, and is a happy blend of both the Gothic and Byzantine traditions.
The chalice’s most striking feature is its bowl, which is carved from a single piece of semiprecious jasper, colorful and rare in itself, and reminiscent of that most famous of Gothic chalices, that of Abbot Suger at St. Denis. Suger’s chalice was built around a carved sardonyx cup from late Antiquity. Like Suger’s, too, this is not solid gold, but vermeil, gilded silver.
The foot and stem of the Mount Athos chalice are also in the Gothic style, with an octagonal base and a stem with a knop, an ornamental collar that makes the stem easier to grip. Also, the dragon-shaped handles are Western in flavor, recalling contemporary Venetian metalwork, as does the working of the knop and the medallions on the foot. But it was clearly intended for Byzantine use. The medallions are small icons in relief, representing the hierarchs Athanasius, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and Gregory Nazianzen, alternating with monograms of the donors. Around the gold rim runs an inscription in tiny letters, the Eucharistic prayer of the Liturgy of St. Basil.
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Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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