Skip to Main Content

Audio Stop 424

00:00 00:00
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 (mounting); Alexandrian 2nd/1st Century B.C.(cup)

Chalice of the Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, 2nd/1st century B.C. (cup); 1137-1140 (mounting)

West Building, Ground Floor - Gallery 18

Read full audio transcript

Chalice of the Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis. Sardonyx cup with gilded silver mounting, adorned with filigrees set with stones, pearls, glass insets and opaque white glass pearls. The cup is about 7 inches high; the diameter of the cup and base is about 5 inches.

This description is just less than 2 minutes long.

The cup of this chalice is carved from a stone called sardonyx, which is veined in swirls ranging from deep tawny red to nearly white. The polished, gleaming exterior of the cup has a fluted, or ridged, surface, which enhances the effect of the veining, making it seem to ripple and shimmer.

This stone cup has been mounted on a gold base, and set with a gold band around the rim. The base and rim are joined by curving gold handles. Where the handles meet the rim, they curl under to form plant-like tendrils.

Focusing now on the rim: the band of gold is decorated with a raised filigree pattern of delicate fronds and tendrils, made of coils of gold wire. This lacy surface is further decorated with gemstones in deep, blood red; pearly white; and sapphire blue: most are oval or round.

The sardonyx cup is supported by a stem, which bulges into a knob immediately below the bowl, then narrows again before curving out to the flaring foot. Both the knob and foot are covered with more of the raised filigree tendrils and set with more gems. The foot is also decorated with gold roundels – oval medallions framing raised images in gold. One roundel is an image of Jesus: a bearded man with a halo framing his face. Other roundels show wheat and grapes.  

West Building Verbal Descriptions