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Lot Essay
Ignazio Vescovali (Fl. 1791-1838) was a trained goldsmith who seems to have specialised in copying works of art from Roman antiquity. Together with his son Luigi, he was also an influential art dealer who sold antiquities to museums and to private collectors.
The scene on the box is taken from a mosaic originally in The Basilica of The Imperial Palace of Hadrian's Villa Tivoli currently in the Vatican.
The lion-bull iconography is an ancient theme believed in Persia to be a symbolic representation of the astronomical and seasonal events and therefore a symbol of the cycle of the day with the lion representing the sun and the bull the night.
A more established interpretation of the lion-bull fight is as one of the oldest mythological symbols in the world, as an image of the fundamental struggling forces of life and death.
The scene on the box is taken from a mosaic originally in The Basilica of The Imperial Palace of Hadrian's Villa Tivoli currently in the Vatican.
The lion-bull iconography is an ancient theme believed in Persia to be a symbolic representation of the astronomical and seasonal events and therefore a symbol of the cycle of the day with the lion representing the sun and the bull the night.
A more established interpretation of the lion-bull fight is as one of the oldest mythological symbols in the world, as an image of the fundamental struggling forces of life and death.