Details
AN IMPORTANT CHARLES II SILVER-GILT TOILET SERVICE
Circa 1670
Each chased with mythological scenes, the flasks with landscapes, all with festoon borders, all except tazza applied with female heads, comprising:
An octagonal tazza, with Aeneas rescuing his father Anchises and his son Ascanius from burning Troy - 8.1/8in. (20.6cm.) wide
Pair of octagonal caskets, the scenes including Mercury playing the flute, Mercury slaying Argus, Jupiter pursuing Io, Jupiter with Io transformed into a Cow watched by Juno, and Apollo and Daphne; each engraved From Burghley House under base - 6in. (15.2cm.) wide
Pair of smaller octagonal caskets, each with a mother and child on the cover - 3.7/8in. (10.2cm.) wide
Pair of gourd-form perfume flasks, with landscapes - 4in. (12cm.) high
A jewelry casket with pincushion, with scenes of hunters in pursuit of prey - 8.3/8in. (21.2cm.) wide
137oz. 10dwt. (4,279 gr.) (8)
Provenance
Brownlow, 4th Marquess of Exeter, removed from Burghley House, Christie's, 7 June 1888. lots 49, 52, 53 (the tazza, the larger octagonal toilet boxes, and the pair of perfume flasks)
The Marquess of Exeter, Christie's, London, July 17, 1959, lots 112 and 112A (the jewelry casket and the smaller octagonal toilet boxes)
The larger toilet boxes were sold subsequently at Christie's, London, March 9, 1988, lot 199, and the tazza at Sotheby's, London, April 30, 1987, lot 117.
This toilet service was apparently commissioned on the occasion of the celebrated marriage in 1670 of John (Cecil), 5th Earl of Exeter to Anne, widow of Charles, Lord Rich and daughter of William, 3rd Earl of Devonshire. Both were age 21 at the time. Among the contemporary comments on the wedding were Matthew Prior's:
" . . . Yet something still I writ
Of Ca'ndish beauty joined to Cecil's wit."
(Complete Peerage)
The present toilet service is one of four made for Burghley House in the late 17th century. The other services, all remaining at Burghley House, are: a six-piece service by Pierre Harache, 1695, a twenty-five piece filigree service, unmarked, and an eight-piece gadrooned service, circa 1680. These were all presumably ordered to outfit the bedrooms created during the 5th Earl's extensive redecoration of Burghley's interior in the highest baroque fashion from 1681 to 1700. Upon visiting the newly completed state apartments, William III was supposed to have remarked that the house was "too large for a mere subject."
