A Pair of Louis XVI Bronze Campana Urns, Circa 1775

Daniel Katz Ltd., London;

Offered Sotheby's London, 6 December 2006, lot 29 (unsold);

Private Collection;

Christie's London, 8 December 2011, lot 255;

Where acquired by Aso O. Tavitian.

The design of these urns is drawn from the monumental examples created for the famed Gardens of Versailles under Louis XIV. Celebrated as one of the supreme examples of the highly controlled jardin à la française, the gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre and are criss-crossed with mathematically arranged walkways and parterres. Much of the sculpture in the gardens draws heavily on Antiquity, harmonising with classicising ornament of the larger garden features such as the central Fountain of Apollo and the Latona Fountain. The bronze marble and bronze vases and urns were no exception, taking canonically Grecian and Roman forms and generally decorated with scenes from ancient history and mythology. The present urns are closest in form to the Vases du Soleil, delivered to the gardens in 1688 and designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. The treatment of the low-relief nymphs on these urns suggests they were designed in the later eighteenth and not the seventeenth century, as part of a revival of interest the classical Louis XIV style during the reign of Louis XVI.