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A rare Georgian gilt bronze Krater form Borghese vase attributed to Matthew Boulton, the beaded inner edge with a flared collar with egg-and-tongue ornament above a finely cast frieze depicting in relief various Bacchanalian scenes, showing Dionysus draped with a panther skin and playing the aulos, accompanied by various male and female revellers playing castanets and a tambourine, Dionysus supporting a drunken Silenus reaching for a spilled wine cup, and a dancing Dionysus holding a thyrsus with a panther at his feet, a male figure holding another thyrsus and a female dancer with a lute, the gadrooned moulded body with a pearl beaded collar overlaid with various stiff leaves, the moulded scrolled handles with similar decoration, above a collar of overlapping berried leaves heading the moulded foot ornamented with scrolling pendant acanthus leaves on a berried laurel leaf wreath upon a square plinth
Most probably Soho, Birmingham, date circa 1775-80
Height 34.3 cm, width 25.4 cm.
Provenance: Hotspur Ltd, London. Mr and Mrs Stephen C. Hilbert, Indiana.
Literature: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, “Vasi, candelabra, cippi, sarcophagi, tripodi, Lucerne, ed ornamenti disegnati ed incise dal Cav. Gio. Batt. Piranesi publicati I, anno MDCCLXXIIX”, 1778, pls. 109-110, illustrating the figures dancing around the frieze and a copy of the original Borghese Vase, which like the original has pairs of bearded male mask heads instead of handles as here. Nicholas Goodison, “The Work of Matthew Boulton”, 1974, pp. 320-21, illustrating a comparable pair of Boulton Bacchanalian vase perfume burners; And p. 322, illustrating a sketch for a vase mounted with classical figures from Boulton and Fothergill’s Pattern Book I, p. 171.
Matthew Boulton’s Bacchanalian vase, portraying a frieze depicting Mercury accompanied by Bacchic figures delivering the infant Bacchus relates closely to the Borghese vase. However Boulton’s work was indirectly based upon the Gaeta vase by the Athenian sculptor Salpion but may also have been inspired from illustrations seen in his copy of Montfauçon’s “L’Antiquité Expliquée”, which reproduced many of the finest antique vases of which the Borghese was one.
The monumental bell-shaped Pentelic marble Krater, known as the Borghese Vase, was sculpted in Athens during second half of the 1st century A.D. and was made as a garden ornament for the Roman market. Standing 1.72 meters tall and with a diameter of 1.35 meters, it was rediscovered in a Roman garden during the late sixteenth century. By 1645 it was placed in the Villa Borghese. On 27th September 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte, brother-in-law of Prince Camillo Borghese, purchased it, together with the bulk of the Borghese antiquities. The vase, which is now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris was sent to Paris after 1808 and by l811 was placed on display in the Musée Napoleon.
Like the Medici Vase, the Borghese Vase has remained one of the most admired and influential vases to survive from antiquity. It was frequently copied during the eighteenth century in a reduced form, both in marble and bronze as well as in silver, ceramic and also Coade stone. Although the overall design of the present work is only loosely based on the original vase, the finely sculpted and cast frieze appears to be an almost exact copy of the original as illustrated by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) in his “Vasi”, which was first published in Rome in 1778.
The Borghese Vase inspired many great pieces of art such as eight silver gilt wine coolers made by Paul Storr, 1808 for the Prince Regent. Many copies were made including one in alabaster in the Great Hall for Houghton Hall in Norfolk, and one of bronze at Osterley Park, Middlesex, both of which are paired with copies of the Medici Vase. The two were also copied three times for the Bassin de Latone at Versailles. In addition to numerous marble copies the Borghese Vase was copied in bronze on a reduced scale during the early eighteenth century and later on an even smaller scale in Rome by Giovanni Zoffoli and Francesco Righetti. It was also reproduced in jasperware by Wedgwood and in artificial Stone by Coade and by Blashfield. The frieze of ecstatic Bacchantes escorting a staggering Silenus was adapted for a silver goblet designed by Schinkel in 1820 and was engraved on the side of one made by Henry Archer and Co. in 1866. It was even sometimes reproduced on flat tablets.
Mr and Mrs Stephen Calvert Hilbert acquired one of the finest art collections of consisting largely of eighteenth and nineteenth century English and Continental works of art that graced their resplendent mansion in Indiana.
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