# The Antioch 'Chalice' > Unrecorded silversmith, northern Syria - 500-550. Formerly published as second half of the first century AD > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unrecorded-syrian-silversmith-antioch-chalice/antioch-chalice/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-20 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded silversmith, northern Syria - **Date:** 500-550. Formerly published as second half of the first century AD - **Medium:** Silver (inner cup) and silver with gilding (outer cup and foot) - **Dimensions:** Overall 19.6 x 18 x 15.2 cm; foot 7.4 cm - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** Early Byzantine, sixth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 300 - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A sixth-century Syrian silver vessel of two parts, a plain inner bowl inside a gilded openwork shell of grapevine holding twelve seated figures, which was sold out of Paris and New York from 1910 as a first-century object. Gustavus Eisen dated it in print in October 1916, with certainty, to the second half of the first century after Christ; the identification of its plain inner cup as the Holy Grail followed from that date, was carried by the owner, and was what the object was exhibited as. It was shown as the Holy Grail at the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago in 1933 by the dealer who owned it, and bought by The Cloisters in 1950.Every large claim made for it has since been withdrawn by the institution that owns it. The Museum dates it 500 to 550, states that the Grail identification has not been sustained, records that its authenticity has at times been challenged, keeps the word chalice inside quotation marks because the shape is now read as a sixth-century standing lamp, and gives the find-spot as Antioch or Kaper Koraon with a question mark.The find was witnessed by no archaeologist, part of it was melted for scrap before anyone recorded it, and the whole surface was cleaned by a commercial restorer in Paris before it was first published. In 1985 a magazine named a Damascus coin forger as its probable maker. No metallurgical analysis has ever been published. ## 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. - **ca. 500-550-unknown** A church in or near Antioch, or the Church of Saint Sergios at Kaper Koraon `[disputed]` (made and given) The Museum's geography field reads 'Made in Antioch or Kaper Koraon (?)'. Marlia Mundell Mango's 1986 reconstruction of the Syrian church treasures places the object in the group of liturgical silver found in 1908 that had belonged to the Church of Saint Sergios at Kaper Koraon, southeast of Antioch, in which case its donors were a village congregation who may have bought it in Antioch. That is an argument from the group, not a document. - **unknown-1910** Buried `[unknown]` (gap) Nothing is documented between manufacture and the reported discovery. No archaeologist witnessed the find and no excavation of the site was ever made; Eisen said so in 1916. - **1910-by 1913** Kouchakji Freres, Paris and New York `[disputed]` (acquisition from the finders) Eisen's 1916 report states that six pieces - two chalices, three book covers and a large ceremonial cross - were procured by Kouchakji Freres in Paris directly from the excavators in 1910, the objects having been found together by Arabs digging a well at Antioch on the Orontes at a depth of many metres. A seventh piece, a smaller silver cross said to be from the same find, went to Wilhelm Froehner and remained in Paris. Crumbled silver fragments sufficient to fill a sack were smelted for the metal. Every element of this account originates with the sellers. The Museum's own provenance line begins '[Kouchakji Freres, Paris and New York (by 1913)]', with the square brackets that denote a dealer, and gives no 1910 date. The Kouchakji objects were moved to New York for safety at the outbreak of the First World War. - **by 1913-1950** Fahim Joseph Kouchakji (1886-1976), New York `[documented]` (ownership and promotion) Kouchakji owned the object through the period of its greatest fame, lent it to the Exposition internationale d'art byzantin in Paris in 1931 and to the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago in 1933-34, where it was shown as the Holy Grail, and published Eisen's popular account of it under his own imprint in New York in 1933. Sold to the Museum in 1950. - **1950-present** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection `[documented]` (purchase) Accession 50.4, credit line The Cloisters Collection, 1950, the fund endowed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. No price has been published in any source consulted. James J. Rorimer reported the acquisition in the Museum's Bulletin in summer 1951 and published an essay on the object's authenticity in 1954. Displayed at The Cloisters for decades; by 1985 shown in a corridor at Fifth Avenue labelled only as early Christian; now in Gallery 300. ## 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. It moved twice by private treaty: from the finders to Kouchakji Freres in 1910, on the sellers' own account, and from Fahim Joseph Kouchakji to the Metropolitan Museum in 1950. No price is published for either transaction, so there is no hammer and no premium to separate, and any figure quoted for this object anywhere should be treated as unsourced until the Museum publishes its own. ## Exhibitions - Exposition internationale d'art byzantin, no. 335, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Pavillon de Marsan, Paris, 1931 - Century of Progress International Exposition, Hall of Religion, Chicago World's Fair, 1933 - The Chalice of Antioch and Associated Objects, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 1935 - The Dark Ages: loan exhibition of early Christian and Byzantine art, Worcester Art Museum, 1937 - Ecclesiastical Arts Exhibition, Springfield Art Museum, 1941 - Early Christian and Byzantine Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1947 - The Middle Ages: Treasures from The Cloisters and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, then the Art Institute of Chicago, 1970 - Silver from Early Byzantium, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1986 - Antioch: The Lost Ancient City, Worcester Art Museum, 2000 - Byzantium, 330-1453, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2008 ## Literature - Gustavus A. Eisen, 'Preliminary Report on the Great Chalice of Antioch', American Journal of Archaeology 20 (October 1916), pp. 426ff - READ - James A. Montgomery, 'A Note on the Great Chalice of Antioch', American Journal of Archaeology 21, no. 1 (1917), pp. 79-81 - READ - Gustavus A. Eisen, 'The Date of the Great Chalice of Antioch', American Journal of Archaeology 21 (April 1917) - NOT read; bibliographic record only - Benjamin Wisner Bacon, 'Eagle and Basket on the Antioch Chalice', Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 5 (1923-24), pp. 1-22 - NOT read - Gustavus A. Eisen, The Great Chalice of Antioch, 2 vols (1923); short version, New York: Fahim Kouchakji, 1933 - NOT read; catalogue record and transcribed author's note only - H. Harvard Arnason, 'The History of the Chalice of Antioch', The Biblical Archaeologist 4, no. 4 (December 1941), pp. 49-64, continued 5, no. 1 (February 1942), pp. 10-16 - NOT read - Floyd V. Filson, 'Who Are the Figures on Chalice of Antioch', The Biblical Archaeologist 5, no. 1 (February 1942), pp. 1-10 - NOT read - Glanville Downey, 'The Inscription on a Silver Chalice from Syria in the Metropolitan Museum of Art', American Journal of Archaeology 55, no. 4 (October 1951), p. 349 - NOT read - James J. Rorimer, 'The Authenticity of the Chalice of Antioch', in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. Dorothy Miner (Princeton, 1954), pp. 161-68 - NOT read - Marlia Mundell Mango, Silver from Early Byzantium: The Kaper Koraon and Related Treasures (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1986), no. 40, pp. 18, 28-33, 63, 183-87 - NOT read - Christine Kondoleon, Antioch: The Lost Ancient City (Princeton, 2000), no. 104, pp. 214-15 - NOT read ## Open questions - Was the object found at Antioch in 1910, as the dealers said, or does it belong to the Kaper Koraon treasure recorded as found in 1908? The Museum's own geography line carries both with a question mark, and the two dates cannot both be right. - Who was the 'M. Andre in Paris' who stripped several millimetres of oxide from the entire surface before 1916? Eisen gives no first name. The best-known Paris restorer of the surname at that date was Alfred Andre, whose workshop supplied Frederic Spitzer, but no source consulted makes the identification. - Has any thorough metallurgical or chemical analysis ever been performed? The 1985 challenge said none had been, and no published analysis has been located since. - Where is the seventh piece, the smaller silver cross acquired by Wilhelm Froehner and said to be from the same find? - What did the Metropolitan pay Fahim Kouchakji in 1950? No figure is published by the Museum in any source consulted. - Is the vessel a chalice or a standing lamp? The Museum now says the shape resembles sixth-century lamps, but keeps the word chalice in the title, in quotation marks. - Are the ten non-Christ figures apostles, tribes of Israel or classical philosophers? Three readings have been in print since 1917 and none has prevailed. - How much of the Holy Grail identification did Eisen argue in his own name, in the two-volume monograph of 1923 and the 1933 booklet, and how much was made for him? Only his 1916 preliminary report was read for this entry; the 1923 monograph could not be located free and the 1933 booklet is lending-restricted. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for The Antioch 'Chalice', accession 50.4, Medieval Art and The Cloisters. Overview, provenance, exhibition history and references tabs, and the gallery audio transcript, all read 4 August 2026. - [2] Gustavus A. Eisen, 'Preliminary Report on the Great Chalice of Antioch Containing the Earliest Portraits of Christ and the Apostles', American Journal of Archaeology 20, no. 4 (October 1916), pp. 426ff. Full text read from the JSTOR Early Journal Content scan. - [3] James A. Montgomery, 'A Note on the Great Chalice of Antioch', American Journal of Archaeology 21, no. 1 (1917), pp. 79-81, dated 20 January 1917. Full text read from the JSTOR Early Journal Content scan. - [4] Frederick M. Winship, 'Met Museum's holy grail challenged', United Press International, 5 April 1985, reporting an article prepared for the May 1985 issue of Art & Antiques by senior editor Jeffrey Schaire and two co-authors. - [5] Internet Archive catalogue record for Gustavus A. Eisen, The Great Chalice of Antioch (New York: Fahim Kouchakji, 1933), 22 pages, with the library transcription of the author's note on pp. 6-7 explaining that the 1923 two-volume monograph was 'both technical and expensive'. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 468346: isPublicDomain true, medium 'Silver (inner cup) and silver with gilding (outer cup and foot)', geography 'Made in Antioch or Kaper Koraon (?)'. - [7] Internet Archive catalogue record for Gustavus A. Eisen, 'The Date of the Great Chalice of Antioch', American Journal of Archaeology 21 (April 1917). Bibliographic record only; the article itself was not read for this entry. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Antioch chalice'. TERTIARY, used only to confirm the outline of the popular account; every substantive claim here is carried by 1 to 5. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. 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