Powder Flask (c. 1590): Art, History and Details

Powder Flask (c. 1590) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Luxury powder flasks served as highly visible badges of ranks. Many highly decorated flasks, like this example, embody all the allure and characteristics of a work of art. This flask depicts an ancient Greek story in which the youthful Paris must reward the most beautiful woman in the world with a golden apple.

Object facts

• Title: Powder Flask
• Date: c. 1590
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: gilt brass over fabric covered wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 19.4 x 12.7 cm (7 5/8 x 5 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.666

A detail from the museum

This powder flask depicts a mythological scene that precipitated the Trojan War. Here we see the Trojan prince Paris giving a golden apple to Aphrodite, the goddess who reciprocates by offering him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of Arms and Armour. [Boston, Massachusetts]: [Frank Gair Macomber], 1900.
• Gilchrist, Helen Ives. A Catalogue of the Collection of Arms & Armor Presented to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. John Long Severance; 1916-1923. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1924.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.

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.