Animations:

Visit
Open today 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Sculpture Garden Extended Hours

Open late until 8:00 p.m. on select nights
Through September 5
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Open 10:00–5:00

Visit
Open today 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Sculpture Garden Extended Hours

Open late until 8:00 p.m. on select nights
Through September 5
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Audio Tour Stop

Chalice of the Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis

West Building Ground Floor, Gallery G18

Part of West Building Tour: Featured Selections (中文)

欧洲早期雕塑策展人Alison Luchs探讨与这一古老石杯相关的工艺和信仰。

Chalice of the Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis (Chinese)

A cup carved from stone is mounted in gold fittings to create a jeweled chalice with handles that curl up each side and a tall, flaring foot below. The stone of the cup is swirled with shell pink and rust brown, and carved to create vertical ridges. The gold rim around the lip flares outward and is set with a band of alternating pairs of small, white pearls and mostly garnet-red stones, though one stone to our right is a muted blue. In this photograph, the handles curve up each side from the base of the stone cup to the gold lip, where the handle divides into two scrolling tendrils on either side of a teardrop shaped center, like curling petals. The base and foot are as tall as the stone cup and gold lip. A knob-like form just below the stone cup is set with deep red and jade green stones around its center, and rows of small pearls around the narrow top and bottom of the knob. The knob is chased to create a pattern of scrolling vines, like tracery. The flaring foot below is also chased with the same pattern, surrounding gold, oval medallions set at regular intervals in the foot. In our view, the medallion to the left shows a bunch of grapes and the center is a portrait of a bearded man with a halo, holding his right hand up with his first two fingers raised. The details on the medallion to our right are difficult to make out but it could be a sheaf of wheat. Small, round jewels are set above and below each medallion, and between each one. — French 12th Century, Alexandrian 2nd Century B.C., Alexandrian 1st Century B.C., Chalice of the Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, 2nd/1st century B.C. (cup); 1137-1140 (mounting), sardonyx cup with heavily gilded silver mounting, adorned with filigrees set with stones, pearls, glass insets, and opaque white glass pearls, Widener Collection, 1942.9.277

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