Lot Essay
The three dancing figures on the sugar-bowl are inspired by three of fifteen wall painting fragments discovered at the Villa di Cicerone in Pompeii, and now in the Archaeological Museum, Naples. For an illustration of all fifteen fragments see Angela Caròla-Perrotti, Exhibition Catalogue, Le Porcellane dei Borbone di Napoli, Capodimonte e Real Fabbrica Ferdinandea 1743-1806, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, December 1986 - April 1987, Naples, 1986, p. 335, no. 262 a-c, where she discusses their influence on the decorative schemes of neoclassical taste in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.