An attractive Italian or German alabster and pastiglia 'Medici' Krater vase after the Antique, 19th century

F. Haskell, N. Penny, Taste and the Antique. The lure of classical sculpture 1500-1900, Yale 1988, pp. 314-316.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Vasi, candelabra, cippi, sarcophagi, tripodi, Lucerne, ed ornamenti disegnati ed incise dal Cav. Gio. Batt. Piranesi publicati l,anno MDCCLXXIIX, pls. 109, 110, here described "Vaso antico di marmot di gran mole che vedesi nel Palazzo della villa Borghese/esistono in esso Fauni, e Baccanti, che danzano un' de quali sostiene Sileno/ubriaco, scorgendosi al mezzo della parte opposta Bacco in piedi, ed/in atto grave, da sudetti Fauni e Baccanti festeggiato"  

The original so-called Medici Vase is a monumental Greek marble bell-shaped Krater vase sculpted in Athens in the second half of the 1st century A.D. as a garden ornament for the Roman market.
The vase reappeared in the 1598 inventory of the Villa Medici, Rome, but its origin is unknown. The Medici Vase, since 1780 in the Uffizi, Florence, together with the Borghese Vase (in the Louvre, Paris),  was one of the most admired and influential vases to have survived from antiquity. It was frequently copied from the middle of the seventeenth century until the middle of the nineteenth century, in reduced scale and in various materials, such as marble, bronze, silver, ceramics, and also Coade stone. Both vases were copied three times for the Basin de Latona at Versailles. Since the late 19th century the Borghese vase has been acknowledged as an important example of neo-Attic workshop sculpture.
Although the overall design and profile of the present lot is only loosely based on the original vase, the finely sculpted and cast frieze can be compared to the original as illustrated by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) in his Vasi, first published in Rome in 1778.