Angelo Barovier

Raised in a family with a long tradition of glass working, Barovier was certainly the best-known member and significant for uniting the knowledge passed down for generations as an artist and a scientist.

The humanist Ludovico Carbone, for example, described Angelum Venetum as optimum artificem crystallinorum vasorum (largest producer of crystalline vessels).

[citation needed] At the request of Filaret, architect of the Dukes of Milan, Barovier was summoned in 1455 at the court of Milan in order to suggest the best glass paste to be used in the construction of Sforzinda, the ideal city desired by Francesco Sforza and designed (but never implemented) by the same Filaret.

It is likely that a Barovier, originally from Treviso, settled in Murano – a settlement situated on islands one mile north of Venice – around 1291 when a law of the Venetian Republic required all glass furnaces to be situated in Murano due to the fear of them causing fires in Venice.

The oldest representative of the family of which we know is Jacobello (born around 1295), whose sons Antonio and Bartolomeo are mentioned in documents of 1348 as fiolari (glassmakers).