# Cup, known as the Rospigliosi Cup > Unrecorded nineteenth-century goldsmith; formerly Benvenuto Cellini, then Jacopo Bilivert, then Reinhold Vasters - Nineteenth century. Metropolitan Museum: probably ca. 1840-50, or somewhat earlier. Hackenbroch 1984-85: ca. 1870-90 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unrecorded-nineteenth-century-goldsmith-rospigliosi-cup/rospigliosi-cup/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-21 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded nineteenth-century goldsmith; formerly Benvenuto Cellini, then Jacopo Bilivert, then Reinhold Vasters - **Date:** Nineteenth century. Metropolitan Museum: probably ca. 1840-50, or somewhat earlier. Hackenbroch 1984-85: ca. 1870-90 - **Medium:** Gold, partly enamelled; pearls - **Dimensions:** 19.7 x 21.6 x 22.9 cm - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** Nineteenth century, in late sixteenth-century style - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 556 - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A gold and enamelled shell cup carried on a dragon standing on a tortoise, with a winged sphinx for a handle, which entered the Metropolitan Museum in 1914 with the Benjamin Altman bequest as a work by Benvenuto Cellini and was for half a century one of the most visited objects in the building. It has since been recatalogued three times: to Jacopo Bilivert of Delft in 1969, into the orbit of the nineteenth-century Aachen goldsmith Reinhold Vasters in 1984 - though the scholar who put it there expressly declined to name him as its maker - and now to nobody at all.The object is nineteenth-century, and the proof is mechanical rather than stylistic. Its figures are cast in halves and subdivided in ways no sixteenth-century goldsmith worked; its wings are attached with soft solder hidden under electrotype gilding; the loop between the sphinx's wings is the head of a pin holding the whole thing together. A cup of this exact design is described in a Rospigliosi inventory of 1722 and was engraved in colour in Frankfurt in 1852 from a drawing made in Rome. Small details differ between that plate and the object in New York, which is the strongest single argument that the Museum holds a copy.The Museum's current date of about 1840 to 1850 sits awkwardly with Vasters, who entered his maker's mark in Aachen in 1853, and no reasoning for the change has been published; the Museum's own machine record carries an end date of 1855, so the two brackets overlap by two years. The original, if there is one, has never been found. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1722-1852** The princely Rospigliosi family, Rome `[disputed]` (earliest record of a cup of this design) An inventory of Rospigliosi possessions dated 6 October 1722, in the Archivio di Stato in Rome, describes a gold tazza worked like a shell on a tortoise foot, with an enamelled reptile and a winged gold sphinx for a handle, an irregular pearl of about twenty grains at her breast, weighing three pounds and an unstated number of ounces. Every feature of the present object is there. Hackenbroch nevertheless concluded in 1984 that the Museum's cup can no longer be regarded as identical with the object described. The family may have received such a piece as a presentation to the Rospigliosi pope, Clement IX (1667-69); that is a suggestion, not a record. - **1852-1883** Prince Giuseppe Rospigliosi, Rome (so named on the Museum's provenance line) `[documented]` (first publication) Published in colour by C. Becker and J. von Hefner-Alteneck, Kunstwerke und Gerathschaften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Frankfurt am Main, 1852-63), I, pp. 49-50, colour plate 38, as a salt vessel of 1540-70 said to be by Benvenuto Cellini, the property of Prince Rospigliosi in Rome, after a drawing made slightly under actual size by the Frankfurt sculptor von der Launitz. Von Hefner-Alteneck reprinted the plate in 1888, adding that the drawing had been made in Rome. Vasters owned a copy of the 1852 book: lot 540 in his estate catalogue. - **by 1883-1909** Prince Rospigliosi, Lamporecchio, near Pistoia, Tuscany `[documented]` (recorded at the family country seat) Eugene Plon published a photographic reproduction in Benvenuto Cellini: Orfevre, medailleur, sculpteur (Paris, 1883), pp. 262-263, plate XXIV, naming Prince Rospigliosi as owner and Lamporecchio as the location. Plon recorded that the prince held no document establishing the attribution to Cellini and knew only that the object had belonged to an ancestor who was grand master at the court of the grand duke of Tuscany. - **1883-1909** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) Nothing is heard of the cup between Plon seeing it in Tuscany, in or before 1883, and its appearance with a London dealer in 1909. This is the window in which the object now in New York could have been made, copied or substituted, and it is entirely undocumented. Neither Hackenbroch nor the Museum fills it. - **1909** Charles Wertheimer, London `[documented]` (trade) The London dealer Charles Wertheimer sold the cup now in the Metropolitan Museum to Benjamin Altman in 1909. No price is published in the sources consulted, by the dealer, the buyer or the Museum. The Museum's provenance line names the sequence Prince Giuseppe Rospigliosi, then Charles Wertheimer, then Benjamin Altman, and attaches no dates to the first two. The date of 1909 for the Wertheimer sale comes from Hackenbroch, in both 1969 and 1984, and not from the Museum. - **1909-1913** Benjamin Altman, New York `[documented]` (purchase) Altman, the New York department-store owner, bought the cup in 1909 through Wertheimer. It was already famous as the Cellini Cup. He died on 7 October 1913 and left his collection to the Metropolitan Museum. - **1913-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (bequest) Credit line Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913; accession number 14.40.667, the prefix recording accessioning in 1914. First shown to the public in 1914. On view in 2026 in Gallery 556 as 'Cup', Italian, probably ca. 1840-50 or somewhat earlier, with no maker named. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This object has never been offered at public auction so far as the sources consulted record, and there is no hammer price for it anywhere. The figures that attach to this story belong to other lots: the Spitzer collection sale of 17 April to 16 June 1893, which realised 9,123,780 francs by the catalogue supplement and about 9,500,000 francs by Beissel's account; and Christie's, London, 5 July 1918, lot 17, the Vasters working drawings, bought by Lazare Lowenstein for GBP 37 16s 0d and given to the Victoria and Albert Museum the following year. Both figures are reported in Hackenbroch's monograph as prices realised without any statement of what charges they include, so neither is printed here as a separated hammer. ## Exhibitions - First shown to the public, as the Cellini Cup - Hackenbroch records that the cup became an instant focus of attention when first exhibited in 1914, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1914 - Art Treasures of the Metropolitan, 7 November 1952 - 7 September 1953, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1952 - Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries, 14 November 1970 - 1 June 1971 - shown as a masterpiece the year after the Bilivert reattribution and fourteen years before the object was shown to be nineteenth-century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970 - Gold, 14 April - 9 September 1973, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973 - On view, Gallery 556, as 'Cup', Italian, probably ca. 1840-50, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2026 ## Literature - C. Becker and J. von Hefner-Alteneck, Kunstwerke und Gerathschaften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Frankfurt am Main, 1852-63), I, pp. 49-50, colour pl. 38 - J. B. von Hefner-Alteneck, Trachten, Kunstwerke und Gerathschaften (Frankfurt am Main, 1888), IX, colour pl. 588 - Eugene Plon, Benvenuto Cellini: Orfevre, medailleur, sculpteur (Paris, 1883), pp. 262-263, pl. XXIV - Otto von Falke, 'Silberfalschungen', Belvedere 5 (1924), pp. 1-6 - Charles Truman, on the Vasters drawings, Connoisseur (1979), p. 154 and pp. 158-161 - cited throughout Hackenbroch 1984-85 and not consulted directly here - Yvonne Hackenbroch, 'Jacopo Bilivert and the Rospigliosi Cup', The Connoisseur 172 (1969), pp. 175-181 - Yvonne Hackenbroch, 'Reinhold Vasters, Goldsmith', Metropolitan Museum Journal 19/20 (1984-85) ## Open questions - Where is the gold shell cup described in the Rospigliosi inventory of 1722? If the object in New York is a copy, the original is unaccounted for and has never surfaced. - Was the Metropolitan's cup made before or after the 1852 colour plate? The Museum's date of ca. 1840-50 or somewhat earlier puts it before; Hackenbroch's ca. 1870-90 puts it after, and only the later date is compatible with Vasters, who entered his mark in 1853. - Why did the Museum drop the Vasters attribution, and on what evidence? No published argument for the change has been found; the catalogue simply names no maker and keeps the culture field as Italian. - Was Frederic Spitzer a party to the commission? Hackenbroch raised the possibility and found nothing that either confirmed or denied it. - What did Benjamin Altman pay Charles Wertheimer in 1909? No figure is published by the dealer, the estate or the Museum. - Did Richard E. Stone ever publish the technical study of the cup announced in 1984? None has been located; he died in 2021 and his findings are known chiefly from teaching. - Is the cup's fine enamelling the work of a separate specialist workshop, and if so whose? Hackenbroch inferred a large workshop from the quality but named no one. - What did the wall label say when the cup hung in Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries in 1970-71, a year after the Cellini attribution had been withdrawn and fourteen years before the object was shown to be nineteenth-century? ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for 'Cup', accession 14.40.667, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts (catalogue entry, provenance tab and exhibition tab consulted 4 August 2026). The Museum's current position: 'A copy of a late-Mannerist gold cup that was once in the possession of the Rospigliosi family in Rome, this object was formerly attributed to the Italian goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini.' Dated 'probably ca. 1840-50, or somewhat earlier'; no maker named. - [2] Yvonne Hackenbroch, 'Reinhold Vasters, Goldsmith', Metropolitan Museum Journal 19/20 (1984-85), the section 'The Rospigliosi Gold Cup' and the biographical opening. Full text read from the Internet Archive scan. - [3] Yvonne Hackenbroch, 'Jacopo Bilivert and the Rospigliosi Cup', The Connoisseur 172 (1969), pp. 175-181. Full text read from the Internet Archive scan. - [4] Joseph W. Alsop, 'The Faker's Art', The New York Review of Books, 23 October 1986. Contemporary account of the effect of Hackenbroch's monograph on museum attributions. - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 192708, fields isPublicDomain, objectDate, objectBeginDate 1800, objectEndDate 1855, classification 'Metalwork-Gold and Platinum'. - [6] Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 'In Memoriam: Richard E. Stone (1939-2021)', conservator emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum, recording that he helped unmask the Rospigliosi Cup among the fakes and forgeries at the Museum. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Rospigliosi Cup'. TERTIARY, used only for the outline of the popular account; to be replaced by the Metropolitan's own technical file when it is published. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.