A PAIR OF FRENCH ORMOLU AND CHAMPLEVE ENAMEL-MOUNTED ONYX VASES

The Barbedienne foundry was a pioneer of the champlevé enamel technique in the second-half of the nineteeth century, first showcasing their foray into Byzantine motifs at the 1862 International Exhibition, London. Their dominance in enamelled works coincided directly at a time when a desire for polychromy in the arts was developing, and the enamels of Barbedienne caused a sensation; vases in the present Byzantine style were particularly popular, and there are now related vases in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. 1996.295) and the musée d'Orsay (inv. OAO 1296 1) (see F. Rionnet, Les Bronzes Barbedienne: L’oeuvre d’une dynastie de fondeurs, Paris, 2016, p. 84).
The present pair of vases epitmize the ‘néo-grec’ style, which developed as a result of a resurgence in the discovery of and interest in antiquities and the Antique, beginning in the Second Empire under Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. It was initially spurred by the excavations of Pompeii beginning in 1848 and was further popularized by the Louvre’s acquisition of part of the Marquis Campana’s collection in 1861. Cleverly conceived, the seated mythical griffons seen here are a reference to the common Greek and Minoan decorative motif, and the enamelled roundels to the vases and their supports are intricately decorated with stylized reinterpretations of anthemion and honeysuckle motifs, an embellishment often used on ancient Greek architecture.