拍品专文
These flower-vases, held by plinth-supported Isis priestesses and designed as monumental centrepieces for a banqueting-table, are conceived in the French Egyptian style promoted by the architect Baron Dominique Vivant-Denon (d. 1825). In the 1790s Denon had accompanied Napoleon on his Egyptian campaign, which aimed to aggrandise Paris in the Egyptian manner as a city worthy of its association with the name of the mother goddess Isis. In 1802 he published his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte, and in the same year was appointed Director of the Emperor's Musée Napoleon (The Louvre). His role included involvement with the design of manufactures and in 1804 he contributed to the Sèvres Manufactory's execution of the Emperor Napoleon's Egyptian dessert sevice, which featured views engraved for his Description de l'Egypte, 1809 ('Egyptomania; Egypt in Western Art, 1730-1930', Exhibition Catalogue, Toronto, 1994, p.220). These golden vases are wreathed with a neck-band hung with the masks of eight Nemes-dressed priestesses and sistra that are positioned above palm-shoots, whose flute-like stems spring from palmette-flowered palm calyx that wrap their bowls. Their loose-ringed handles, bolted by Isis-stars, are held by addorsed and golden-dressed statuettes of Nemes-dressed Isis priestesses, conceived as antique-green bronzes and kneeling on plinths with festive lion-feet.
The arched sistra that decorate the vase-rims served in antiquity as ceremonial rattles to summon deities. Their use was discussed by classical authors such as Apuleius, whose description of the mother goddess Isis bearing a sistrum and water-bucket was illustrated in Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegiptiacus, 1652 ('Egyptomania', op. cit., p.60, fig.29).
This vase-pattern is likely to have been introduced in 1807, the year in which Pierre-Louis Dagoty (d. 1840) proposed the manufacture for the Imperial Garde-Meuble of Etruscan and Egyptian vases. Some were to be decorated 'à ornements etrusques' and others were to be 'en forme ancienne Egypte'. It was at this period that his elegant boutique in the boulevard Poissonnière was recognised as amongst the most fashionable in Paris. A smaller version of this vase-pattern, signed by Dagoty and now in the National Museum of Wales, is recorded with the manufactory inscription 'Manufacture de sa Majesté L'Impératrice à Paris', which was used by Dagoty following the granting of permission for his rue de Chevreuse factory to adopt the arms of the Empress Josephine in 1804 (R. de Plinval de Guillebon, Faiences et Porcelaine de Paris, XVIIIe-XIX Siècles, Dijion, 1995, p.342, fig.326).
This pair of vases is likely to have been acquired in Paris around 1807 by Mary Hamilton Nisbet, 7th Countess of Elgin (d. 1855), who helped finance the acquisition of the Parthenon marbles that bear the family name and were obtained while her first husband served as King George III's Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Sublime Port of Selim III, Sultan of Turkey. Following her divorce from Lord Elgin in 1807, Lady Elgin married the connoisseur and M.P. for Fife, Robert Ferguson of Raith (d. 1840). On their return to Scotland, these vases were placed on the pair of Egyptian folio-cabinets (offered in these Rooms, 17 November 1994, lot 112) in the Library at Raith
The arched sistra that decorate the vase-rims served in antiquity as ceremonial rattles to summon deities. Their use was discussed by classical authors such as Apuleius, whose description of the mother goddess Isis bearing a sistrum and water-bucket was illustrated in Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegiptiacus, 1652 ('Egyptomania', op. cit., p.60, fig.29).
This vase-pattern is likely to have been introduced in 1807, the year in which Pierre-Louis Dagoty (d. 1840) proposed the manufacture for the Imperial Garde-Meuble of Etruscan and Egyptian vases. Some were to be decorated 'à ornements etrusques' and others were to be 'en forme ancienne Egypte'. It was at this period that his elegant boutique in the boulevard Poissonnière was recognised as amongst the most fashionable in Paris. A smaller version of this vase-pattern, signed by Dagoty and now in the National Museum of Wales, is recorded with the manufactory inscription 'Manufacture de sa Majesté L'Impératrice à Paris', which was used by Dagoty following the granting of permission for his rue de Chevreuse factory to adopt the arms of the Empress Josephine in 1804 (R. de Plinval de Guillebon, Faiences et Porcelaine de Paris, XVIIIe-XIX Siècles, Dijion, 1995, p.342, fig.326).
This pair of vases is likely to have been acquired in Paris around 1807 by Mary Hamilton Nisbet, 7th Countess of Elgin (d. 1855), who helped finance the acquisition of the Parthenon marbles that bear the family name and were obtained while her first husband served as King George III's Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Sublime Port of Selim III, Sultan of Turkey. Following her divorce from Lord Elgin in 1807, Lady Elgin married the connoisseur and M.P. for Fife, Robert Ferguson of Raith (d. 1840). On their return to Scotland, these vases were placed on the pair of Egyptian folio-cabinets (offered in these Rooms, 17 November 1994, lot 112) in the Library at Raith