There’s a blue dragon that lives in an exhibition at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. The winged beast is caught in mid-roar, arching its neck with angry eyes, exposed teeth, and a bright red tongue curling from its mouth. No, this isn’t a scene in a medieval painting; the dragon is an Italian glass ornament on a compote dish, its long blue tail and body wrapped around the vessel’s stem. This beast, as well as a collection of forty-nine other mythical creatures (neighing Pegasuses and dragons caught in mid-flight) and real-life animals (sinuous dolphins, seahorses, swans, and serpents), all expertly imagined in glass, are the focus of the exhibition Fantastic Creatures of the Venetian Lagoon: Glass 1875–1915.
If it is these pieces’ forms and colors that make them eye-catching, their craftsmanship demands respect. Glassworkers expertly sculpted the zoological forms from hot glass and dusted them with gold. Next, they precisely affixed the dragons and other creatures to blown glassware. The figures are designed to appear as if they’re moving, imbuing the vases, cups, and bowls they’re mounted on with a sense of life.
he period covered by the show, which followed the Habsburg Empire’s 1815–1866 occupation of northern Italy, was a time of renewal for Venice. Austrian rule had devastated the Venetian glass industry to promote its own glass trade in Bohemia (the modern-day Czech Republic). Once Venice joined the Kingdom of Italy, advocates like lawyer-turned-businessman Antonio Salviati and glassmaker Giuseppe Barovier, whose works are represented in the Chrysler show, revitalized the industry by founding firms to manufacture and sell Venetian glass. Instead of starting over with new designs, these companies sought inspiration from traditional Venetian glassware that featured forms from antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The items on display at the Chrysler are drawn from a 2022 donation by Marjorie Reed Gordon of eighty works from her personal collection. “When I saw that more than half of the objects were ornamented with dragons, dolphins, and other fabulous creatures,” explains the exhibition’s curator, Carolyn Swan Needell, “it became clear to me that there was a fabulous show waiting to happen.” Although these creatures typically terrify, at the Chrysler Museum of Art they’re too beautiful to look away from.
Fantastic Creatures of the Venetian Lagoon: Glass 1875–1915 • Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia • to August 18 • chrysler.org
