A LOUIS XVI STYLE ST. ANNE MARBLE URN AND COVER

This wonderfully well-proportioned urn expertly carved out of luxurious St. Anne marble reflects the French 'antique' fashion popularized in France throughout the 1760s by publications including Jean-Charles Delafosse's 1768 Nouvelle Iconologie Historique. Delafosse’s book includes a plethora of vase designs incorporated into numerous allegorical depictions of the arts, virtues, the senses, the continents, sciences, etc. Although the present vase’s exact design does not appear in Delafosse’s work, there are a number of vessels, particularly those emblematic of charity and tyranny, whose design elements appear on this lot.