and terrain in differing proportions. Cole's Goblet offers neither iconography nor an inscription that would confirm a religious interpretation of the picture. Furthermore, the painter has placed the goblet far from the center of the canvas, which minimizes its emblematic significance. The waters of the goblet, though, can be seen as a civilizing influence. The inhabitants of the goblet have a Utopian existence, pleasure boating on the tranquil waters and living among the temples and leafy woods. Where the waters spill onto the landscape below—where the two worlds interact—signs of life appear. In the background, far from the influence of the goblet's waters, the mountains are desolate and rocky. A similar depiction of civilization by the waterside can be seen in Cole's An Evening in Arcady (1843). Louis Legrand Noble was a friend and biographer of Cole, and could have been expected to have some insight into the work. In his commentary, however, there is no mention of these ideas. He wrote, "There [the goblet] stands, rather reposes upon its shaft, a tower-like mossy structure, light as a bubble, and yet a section of a substantial globe. As the eye circles its wide rolling brim, a circumference of many miles, it finds itself in fairy land; in accordance though with nature on her broadest scale... Tourists might travel in the countries of this imperial ring, and trace their fancies on many a romantic page. Here steeped in the golden splendors of a summer sunset, is a little sea from Greece, or Holy Land, with Greek and Syrian life, Greek and Syrian nature looking out upon its quiet waters." Parry's 1971 article on the painting instead looks to Cole's first tour to Europe (1829–32) to unravel the imagery of the goblet. Cole visited England and its preeminent landscape painter, J.M.W. Turner, whose work he had mixed feelings about. He was however drawn to Turner's Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829), making two sketches of the painting and another study for a possible treatment of his own, which did not come to fruition. The titular cyclops Polyphemus is pivotal to the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey, and Cole's interest in the subject demonstrates his openness to "the creative possibilities of such a Mediterranean scene". Meanwhile, as Cole researched themes for his painting series The Course of Empire, he would have encountered the story of Mount Athos in Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture. The Ancient