Barovier Angelo Biography
Angelo Barovier (Venice, ... – Venice, 1480) was an Italian glass artist. Raised in a family with a long glassmaking tradition, Angelo was certainly the most well-known and significant member, as he was able to combine the knowledge handed down through various generations with a singular inventiveness and creativity as an artist and scientist. Biographical information is few and fragmentary, but confirms his skill in the treatment of glass. The humanist Ludovico Carbone, for example, described Angelum Venetum as optimum artificem crystallinorum vasorum (great producer of crystalline vases). Another testimony to the high esteem for Barovier is the decree of the Venetian Republic which, around 1455, granted him the exclusive right to produce very clean glass, produced using a technique he developed, which he called crystalline glass or Venetian crystal. According to some, the original creation of a glass paste called chalcedony should also be attributed to Barovier. At the request of Filarete, architect of the dukes of Milan, Barovier was summoned to the court of Milan in 1455 to be able to suggest to the master the use of the best glass pastes to be used in the construction of Sforzinda, the ideal city desired by Francesco Sforza and designed ( but never created) by Filarete himself, who had written about Barovier: «These glasses will be made by a very good friend of mine who is called Maestr'Angelo da Murano who is the one who makes those crystalline works» There are no known real works by Barovier , although some art historians assign him a wedding cup preserved in the glass museum of Murano, the bird cup in Trento and a blue glass chalice in the medieval civic museum of Bologna.
