Medallion: The Last Supper (late 1400s): Art, History and Details

Medallion: The Last Supper (late 1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The word enamel derives from the Old French esmail and the Old High German smelzen, meaning "to smelt." This is the most crucial process in the making of enamel. To prepare enamel, the constituents of glass (flint, or sand, as well as red lead, and soda or potash) are heated together to form a clear flux. To this a coloring agent (usually a metallic oxide) is added: copper for green, cobalt for blue, iron for red or brown. The enamel is then allowed to cool and solidify in slabs. Before use, each color is separately ground into a fine powder, placed on a prepared metal surface, and fired in a kiln. When cool, the surface is polished to remove any imperfections and add brilliance to the colors. The difference between the various enameling techniques lies chiefly in the methods used to prepare the metal surface for the enamel.

Object facts

• Title: Medallion: The Last Supper
• Date: late 1400s
• Culture: France
• Type: Enamel
• Technique: basse-taille enamel on silver
• Dimensions: Diameter: 5.8 cm (2 5/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Gothic
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1979.5

Collection credit

Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1979." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (1980): 58-99.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.