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Urn with Grotesque Masks
Florentine 16th Centuryc. 1580/1620
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
Details
- Title: Urn with Grotesque Masks
- Creator: Florentine 16th Century
- Date Created: c. 1580/1620
- Physical Dimensions: overall (including cover): 52.8 × 87.9 × 42 cm (20 13/16 × 34 5/8 × 16 9/16 in.) gross weight: 97.977 kg (216 lb.)
- Provenance: Probably Rome, before 1633; Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu and of Fronsac [1585-1642], château de Richelieu, Poitou, France, c. 1633.[1] acquired, possibly in Florence or Paris, by Lewis Einstein [1877-1967], Paris;[2] gift 1953 to NGA. [1] The urn now in the NGA is illustrated by Giovanni Angelo Canini, c. 1632/1633, in an album of drawings of sculptures to be exported from Rome for the château de Richelieu in Poitou; see Montembaut, Marie and John Schloder, with preface by Jacques Thuillier and forward by Françoise Viatte, _L’album Canini du Louvre et la collection d’antiques de Richelieu_, Paris, 1988: 290, fig. 117 (fol. 84 of the album). A list of these objects (p. 20) mentions “cinq vases dont quatre en porphyre modernes et un en marbre blanc.” A concordance of inventories of sculpture in that Richelieu château (pp. 74, 135, 217 [no. 205, v. 67]) suggests the NGA urn may have been the one on the cornice of the chimneypiece of the cabinet du Roi, described by Vignier in 1676: “Sur la cornice de la cheminée il y a une Urne de Porphire antique d’une grandeur & d’une beauté extraordinaire.” The other three Richelieu porphyry urns, as drawn by Canini (p. 290, fig. 118), were relatively modest in size and appearance. [2] A note written by Elise Ferber, dated 10 April 1962 (in NGA curatorial files), indicates that the donor "said he was told in Florence that [the vase] was from a drawing by Amato and that [it] came from the Pitti Palace." The base was purchased separately "at Lannigan's (sp?)" but it is not clear from the note whether the vase was actually bought in Florence, or simply discussed with people in that city. It may have been acquired in Paris, where Lewis Einstein lived.
- Rights: CC0
- Medium: porphyry
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