Urn with Grotesque Masks

c. 1580/1620

Carved with highly polished, speckled, rust-colored stone, this wide, elongated urn is oval shaped when seen from above. We look onto one longer side in this photograph. The foot of the urn is carved into two lion’s feet, turned slightly outward at an angle from each other. Where the body of the urn meets the feet is an animal-like face with a prominent lower lip and lion-like nose. The lower portion of the urn curves up to create a shallow bowl shape before angling inward into a deeply carved cove above. Two scrolling handles, one on each narrow end of the urn, curve from the bulging bowl of the urn down to the feet. Each handle is decorated with a human face, seen in profile with mouth open, near where the handle meets the body of the urn. The lid is decorated with scrolls and foliation that flank a humanoid face with a gaping mouth, a broad nose, and wide-open eyes. Light glints off the smooth polished surface, and the urn sits against a charcoal-gray background.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 19

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    porphyry

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Lewis Einstein

  • 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.)

  • Accession

    1953.13.2

Artwork history & notes

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.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1988

  • 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: 74, 135, 217, 290, fig. 117.

1993

  • Penny, Nicholas. The Materials of Sculpture. London and New Haven, 1993: 33, pl. 32.

1996

  • Butters, Suzanne B. The Triumph of Vulcan: Sculptors' Tools, Porphyry, and the Prince in Ducal Florence. Villa I Tatti / The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies 14. 2 vols. Florence, 1996: 32n.

Wikidata ID

Q62286420

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