Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper

Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 200. ALESSANDRO ALGARDI | DESIGN FOR A VASE WITH A FEMALE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE SEATED ON TWO DOLPHINS ON THE COVER FLANKED BY TWO ALTERNATIVE HANDLES, A LION AND A SATYR WITH A PUTTO.

ALESSANDRO ALGARDI | DESIGN FOR A VASE WITH A FEMALE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE SEATED ON TWO DOLPHINS ON THE COVER FLANKED BY TWO ALTERNATIVE HANDLES, A LION AND A SATYR WITH A PUTTO

Lot Closed

July 29, 01:37 PM GMT

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

ALESSANDRO ALGARDI

Bologna 1598 - 1654 Rome

DESIGN FOR A VASE WITH A FEMALE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE SEATED ON TWO DOLPHINS ON THE COVER FLANKED BY TWO ALTERNATIVE HANDLES, A LION AND A SATYR WITH A PUTTO


Pen and brown ink and grey wash over black chalk

unframed: 289 by 194 mm

framed: 520 x 432 mm


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Charles Eggimann (1863-1948), Geneva and Paris (L.530, twice)

This elaborate design for vase, previously unattributed, can be stylistically associated with similar works by the Bolognese sculptor Alessandro Algardi.  It was most likely never executed, but must have been drawn with a definitive purpose in mind. The design shows a choice of two alternative motives for the handles, and the lion to the right could be an heraldic reference. The vase is decorated with three medallions, within green garlands, representing heroes of Roman history: Mucius Scaevola, The Continence of Scipio and Marcus Curtius. Above these medallions there are three masks. The foot, ending in feline paws, appears to be rather small to support such a large object. The graphic style seems to be still very Carraccesque, which is in keeping with the Algardi's training in his native city of Bologna, and in the Academy of Ludovico Carracci.


We are very grateful to Jennifer Montagu for confirming the attribution to Algardi, having seen the drawing in the original, and for suggesting that the vase could have been intended to be made in silver, with the medallions probably in a different material, perhaps crystal. It was not at all unusual in the seventeenth century to have such richly decorated objects, which were a popular form of secular and religious decoration.


A similar design for a less elaborate vase surmounted by an allegorical figure of Rome is in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.1 Jennifer Montagu believes the latter to have been intended for silver and she writes: ‘but again the group of Roma with the wolf and the twins on the cover could hardly have been lifted off, and its purpose must have been purely decorative; the basic form of the body of the vase was fairly standard, and such a drawing indicates very clearly the rôle of the sculptor in designing the cover, the satyr mask on the body, and the two alternative handles.'2


1. Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inv. no. 10503

2. J. Montagu, Alessandro Algardi, New Haven and London 1985, vol. I, pp. 190-191, reproduced p. 24, fig. 32, vol II, p. 485, no. 86