A PAIR OF ITALIAN ORMOLU AND BRONZE JARDINIÈRES

These French-fashioned wine-bottle urns on tripod-altar plinths, are executed in gilt-enriched bronze and conceived in the Roman/Pompeian manner as lustral water-buckets (sceaux) for use at festive occasions. They have Apollo-headed handles, whose ribbon-ties feature bas-reliefs of griffin issuing from laurelled rainceau scrolls that are flowered with 'Venus' roses and 'Apollo' sunflowers. The Herculanium pattern, of these 'Sacrifical Vases' featured amongst the bronze 'furniture and vessels' illustrated in Giovanni Antonio Bayardi's Le Antichità di Ercolano Exposte, Vol. 6, Naples, 1767 p. 7. During the 1770s, the celebrated Rome-trained artist Jean-Guillaume Moitte (d.1810) was employed by the Parisian goldsmith Henri Auguste (d.1816) to translate the pattern for use as sideboard 'sceaux' (see Designing The Décor: French Drawings from the Eighteenth Century, no. 121). Replicas of the antiquity were also manufactured by Messrs. Chiurazzi of Naples.