By the 1500s, Germanic glassmakers developed large, clear glass forms, partly to accommodate the demand for enamel decoration. Vessel types such as this goblet provided broad surface areas for painted figural and heraldic scenes.

Dated 1576, this goblet is one of the earliest known dated hunting glasses. Hunt glasses, a standard German subject type, only became common in the 1580s. In the 1500s and 1600s, Germanic glass painters and engravers used biblical, mythological, allegorical, erotic, and genre themes to decorate vessels, sometimes repeating certain motifs over and over for generations.