A Pair of Large White-Painted Terracotta Ornamental Vases, Late 18th/Early 19th Century

Christie's London, 10 December 2009, lot 806

This pair is based on engraved designs for vases published by the French sculptor Jacques François Joseph Saly (1717-1776) as Vasa A Se Inventa Atq. Studii Causa Delin. Et Incisa in 1746 (several reproduced in Sven Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, London, 1974, plates 291-293). Born in Valenciennes, Saly trained at the Académie royale in Paris and won the Prix de Rome in 1738, arriving in Italy in 1740 where he studied with other artists at the French Academy in Rome including the painter Joseph-Marie Vien and the architects Jean-Laurent Le Geay and Ennemond Alexandre Petitot, all of whom were proponents of the nascent neoclassical style that emerged in the 1750s in reaction to the excesses of the rococo taste. Saly's vase designs were published shortly before he left the Eternal City to return to France and then to Denmark to serve as director of the Danish Royal Academy, and their aesthetic betrays influences of both Classical antiquity and the exuberant Roman Baroque style of Bernini and would exert significant influence on the development of French decorative arts in the late Louis XV and Louis XVI periods.