MODELLO OF A VASE WITH LOVE France, late 18th... Lot 90

MODELLO OF A VASE WITH LOVE France, late 18th century Terra cotta in two parts H. 117 cm, W. 74 cm, D. 28 cm This monumental vase is placed on a pedestal in doucine, decorated with a cartouche in bas-relief representing a couple of pigeons in love. It is decorated with garlands of roses and hosts the amusements of two putti. In his race, the one on the right has dropped his quiver and arrows. He doesn't care, absorbed by his playmate who seems to have dropped and is looking at him intensely. The pigeons cooing tenderly below echo these two little loves. The whole piece, modelled in terracotta, is more than one metre high. It is probably a model for a marble vase intended to decorate a garden, as is sometimes seen in 18th century collections of ornaments. The king's sculptor Gilles-Paul Cavet himself composed this type of work, supplying drawn models to engravers to be used by "young artists who are destined to decorate buildings. In a collection published in Paris in 1777, he gave different models of vases with putti and pink garlands, with or without pedestal (fig. 1). In our model, the vase gives way to the loves.