Shell-shaped Bowl, so-called Dragon Bowl

Gasparo Miseroni (ca. 1518–1573) established the period’s foremost workshop for precious stone vessels in Milan. The outstanding value of the stones and the skill required to cut them – mastered only by a handful of virtuoso artists – made them some of the most highly prized objects in princely Kunstkammer collections of the 16th and 17th centuries. Emperor Maximilian owned over 60 such works; extant records show that some of them are the work of Gasparo Miseroni