Roman writer recounts the suggestion of the architect Dinocrates to Alexander that the mountain be shaped into "the statue of a man holding a spacious city in his left hand, and in his right a huge cup, into which shall be collected all the streams of the mountain, which shall thence be poured into the sea." This fantastical image appeared in 18th- and 19th-century illustrations that Cole may have seen. As Parry writes, "the precedent of a classical architectural fantasy on this scale supplies an alternative to the natural assumption that the Titan's goblet was actually made by a giant who simply left it behind". But a literal rendition of this image may not have suited Cole's art: being a landscape artist, he would have been more comfortable expressing it only topographically, avoiding the need to render a massive stone human form. Cole's drawings from his trip to Europe or shortly thereafter also appear to prefigure the Goblet. They show his interest in fountains and basins and are influenced by those he saw during the Italian leg of his voyage, in Florence, Rome, and Tivoli. In one drawing, a series of huge basins adorned with vegetation descends to the sea. Another depicts a single, mossy-rimmed basin of normal size, but the ground-level view makes it appear monumental. Cole's drawings of the Italian volcanic lakes Nemi and Albano are also reminiscent of the goblet's waters and rim, insofar as they suggest that a "basic visual analogy was at work in Cole's thoughts, an analogy between [these] actual landscapes he had observed and the shape of the water vessels and basins he imagined." Parry also suggests the "unusual, but not impossible" idea that Cole's Goblet was a landscape artist's answer to the still life genre. Visiting the home of his patron Luman Reed, an avid art collector, Cole would have seen a still-life painting "with Goblet and Lemon" by the 17th-century Dutch artist Willem van Aelst. The highlight of that painting is a translucent glass goblet. The similarities are basic, with both paintings having a vertical format and an off-center drinking vessel. Provenance Cole likely painted the picture in a fairly short period, given its small size and very thin application of paint. (The canvas is very visible in the accompanying image, viewed at full resolution.) He did so without commission, so the subject was purely his own. He asked $100 for