CIRCA 1815

The distinctive Grecian bas-relief of leopardesses drinking from a fountain, undoubtedly inspired by an antique prototype, was engraved as early as 1807 in England, when it featured in a design for a cheval-glass cresting illustrated in Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, London, 1807, pl.14. Hope's celebrated pattern-book was largely inspired by the oeuvre of Messrs. Percier and Fontaine, the Emperor Napolon's principal architects, as published in their Recueils des Dcorations Interieures of 1802, and so there is most probably an earlier, as yet untraced, French engraved source.