Pair of Pharmacy Bottles

c. 1500–1510

Italy, Papal States, Faenza

Overall: 38.8 cm (15 1/4 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1943.52

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During the Renaissance, aristocrats tested the speed and agility of their greyhounds in a sport called “hare coursing.”

Description

The inscriptions on these two pharmacy bottles suggest that they held medicinal and domestic remedies. One bottle reads SCABIOS, or “scabious water,” which may refer to a teasel root compound that was used to clean and decontaminate velvet. Inscribed on the other bottle is the word CAPILLV, which was a liquid extracted from a fern-like plant commonly referred to as “maiden’s hair water.”