拍品專文
Dating from the late nineteenth century these vases are in the Louis XVI 'antique' style of a century earlier. The neoclassical revival promoted by the great marchands-merciers during the 1770s pandered to the aspirations of the noblesse and created a whirlwind fashion for the 'goût grec'. These vases recall Grecian athéniennes and their tapering bodies with Bacchic masks hung with floral swags and supported by ram's hoof monopodia closely relate to a jardinière, circa 1785, in the J. Paul Getty Museum (see G. Wilson & C. Hess, Summary Catalogue of European Decorative Arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2001, p. 137, pl. 277). The revival of the Louis XVI style in the ninetheenth century was led by Empress Eugénie and the use here of pink marble richly ornamented in gilt-bronze perfectly encapsulates the luxuriant tastes of the Second Empire.