Lot Essay
Designed in the French Empire or Grecian manner, the 'Etruscan' decorated top is framed by an ormolu band and fretted Vitruvian scroll gallery and is supported on a Tuscan columnar shaft with ormolu apothyge embellished with flower and laurel bands above the 'altar' tripod plinth with rounded ends and toupie feet. Related table-supports featured in Thomas King's, Cabinet-maker's Sketch Book of 1835; and related rosewood furniture was manufactured at this time by Messrs Thomas and George Seddon of Aldersgate Street.
The principal figure derives from that of Diana on a celebrated sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum, which in the early 19th Century was engraved in H. Moses, Collection of Antique Vases, Altars, paterae, Tripods, Candelabra, Sarcophagi etc., 1814, pl.139. The 'Goddess of the Night' also appears with the river god in a related stucco medallion attributed to the sculptor Thomas Banks (d.1805). (See: M. Jourdain, English Decoration and Furniture, London, n.d., fig.191. However the figure on the table does not wear Diana's crescent badge and may be intended to represent her sister Aurora, the Dawn Goddess, whose horses having drunk from the river pouring from the river god's urn are led forward by a putto preparing to unveil the dawn. A painting of the same subject, possibly derived from an engraving after G. B. Cipriani (d.1785) features on a satinwood pedestal for a barometer executed in 1787 by Benjamin Vulliamy (d.1811) (see: T. Clifford, 'Vulliamy Clocks and British Sculpture', Apollo, October 1990, pp.226-237).
The principal figure derives from that of Diana on a celebrated sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum, which in the early 19th Century was engraved in H. Moses, Collection of Antique Vases, Altars, paterae, Tripods, Candelabra, Sarcophagi etc., 1814, pl.139. The 'Goddess of the Night' also appears with the river god in a related stucco medallion attributed to the sculptor Thomas Banks (d.1805). (See: M. Jourdain, English Decoration and Furniture, London, n.d., fig.191. However the figure on the table does not wear Diana's crescent badge and may be intended to represent her sister Aurora, the Dawn Goddess, whose horses having drunk from the river pouring from the river god's urn are led forward by a putto preparing to unveil the dawn. A painting of the same subject, possibly derived from an engraving after G. B. Cipriani (d.1785) features on a satinwood pedestal for a barometer executed in 1787 by Benjamin Vulliamy (d.1811) (see: T. Clifford, 'Vulliamy Clocks and British Sculpture', Apollo, October 1990, pp.226-237).