The Medici Vase
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1770
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
485 mm (Height) x 380 mm (Depth)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 771969.2
Summary
Small bronze reproduction of the so-called Medici Vase, a colossal marble krater made in Athens in the first century A.D., recorded in the Villa Medici in Rome in 1598 and since 1780 in Florence, in the Uffizi. The bronze vase is in krater form, with an extended lip and fluted stem, the lower section of the bowl extensively decorated with acanthus and equipped with a pair of fluted loop handles rising from satyrs heads. The main scene depicts a scene from ancient Greek history, with two helmeted warriors standing either side of a woman who is seated on the ground, below a statue of the goddess Diana (Artemis). On the other side a series of standing figures. The subject was previously described as the story of Iphigenia, sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to Artemis, so that the goddess would allow the Greek ships to sail for Troy.
Full description
The Borghese and Medici vases began to be copied and reproduced from the seventeenth century, but it is from the mid eighteenth century that the production of paired small bronze derivations increased. The two vases were harmonised for the majority of these reductions, the Borghese model being equipped with similar handles to the Medici vase for example. The Osterley casts are of high quality and beautifully finished. They are likely to have been made in Rome, in one of the leading foundries operating in the late eighteenth century. The two most successful were those of the Zoffoli (Giacomo, c. 1731-85 and Giovanni, c. 1745-1805) and Francesco Righetti (1738-1819). Both foundries offered the Borghese and Medici vases as a pair. There is a pair signed by Zoffoli at Saltram (38 cm. high, with spiralling fluting on the stem and double masks instead of handles, as on the original Borghese vase. A cast of the Medici vase signed by Zoffoli is in the Torrie collection, University of Edinburgh (34 cm. high.). The size differential would make it unlikely that the Osterley vases were made in the Zoffoli workshop. The Righetti’s list of their wares on the other hand specified the height as 2 ½ Roman palmi (c. 53 cm.), therefore reasonably close to the Osterley pair. (Jeremy Warren, 2017)
Provenance
Possibly part of the Robert Adam remodeling of the Marble Hall between 1760 and 1780, but not mentioned in the 1782 inventory. First noted in the 1871 inventory of Osterley Park: 'pair of 19in bronze Vases on Square Carved Wood pedastals [sic]' Entrance Hall. Purchased from George Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (1910-1998) by HM Government in 1949 for the Nation and vested in the Victoria and Albert Museum; transferred to the National Trust in 2002.
Credit line
National Trust Collections (Osterley Park, The Jersey Collection)
References
Haskell and Penny 1981: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500 - 1900, New Haven and London, 1981, no. 82