Description
Silver cup;
in the Renaissance style, featuring a chiselled decoration of acanthus leaves, godrons and vine tendrils on the foot. The stem is chiselled with griffin heads; the body is adorned with broad fluting surmounted by a frieze of curling foliage on an amati ground, set within a false bowl decorated with leafy heads framed by bands of lapis lazuli. Above the base, beneath the central entablature: engraved ‘Raphael Fez 1863’.
A Portuguese piece from the mid-19th century.
Height: 20.2 cm.
Gross weight: 687.8 g
Rafael Zacarias da Costa
Another academic background was that of the contemporary goldsmith Rafael Zacarias da Costa (1816–1895), who took courses in ornamental and figure drawing at the Lisbon Academy of Fine Arts³⁹ and who, by 1845, was already practising, signing and dating his pieces⁴⁰. Over the years, he gained the recognition and prominence that the Santa Bárbara family had failed to achieve, partly thanks to the impact caused by a silver hunting knife made from an ivory model provided by Dom Fernando II. This work became one of the most widely publicised and celebrated pieces of 19th-century Portuguese silversmithing, about which much has been written, and which deserves a separate study at the end of this chapter.
In the inventory under consideration, the silversmith’s name appears only once, in connection with a ‘chalice-shaped cup in repoussé and skilfully chased silver, with two lapis lazuli set in the silver ’ (no. 116, volume I). According to the collector, ‘the design was conceived in the workshop of R. Pinto, now Estêvão de Souza, and the work was carried out by the highly skilled chaser Raphael… It is a very fine piece, which I commissioned once again from the late R. Pinto’. This thus reveals the collaboration between our goldsmith and Raimundo Pinto, who, together with Estêvão de Sousa, founded the firm
Pinto & Sousa, where Dom Fernando II acquired many of his pieces of antique silverwork, jewellery or silverware for everyday use and, on occasion, specific commissions such as this one, which was incorporated into his collection.
The king’s expenditure records indicate that in June 1862 the sum of 500,000 réis was paid ‘for a chased silver cup’⁴¹, a piece which… Silver chalice with lapis lazuli
Inscription: “Raphael FEZ 1863”
Weight: 687 g.
See original version (French)
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About the sale
Biennale – Classical Centuries & Tableware
Auction location
Auction time
09/16/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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