Large amphora vase, Florence manufacture Jafet... Lot 26

Large amphora vase, Florence manufacture Jafet Torelli (1874-1898) In polychrome majolica with a white ground, decorated with grotesques on a blue and ochre ground; surmounted by a statuette of a winged naked putto in the act of dancing with his right leg raised and his arms raised above his head holding cymbals; above the handles are seated two other winged putti, naked and with crossed legs, one in the act of playing a trumpet and the other a mandola; under the handles are two masks in high relief, in the central part of the vase on both sides there is a reserve shaped with the representation of Venus and Cupid, the gods are depicted in an interior on one side and instead at the banks of a stream on the other. Around the painted reserves there are harpies and grotesques on a blue background. Shaped foot on octagonal base also decorated with grotesques. 112x60 cm Jafet Torelli was an important Florentine ceramist and sculptor; he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence where he graduated in 1857, and later became one of the master decorators of the Manifattura Ginori where he remained until 1873, the year in which he founded his own company. This vase can be attributed to the first period of the Torelli factory, precisely because of the use of colour borrowed directly from the decorative stylistic elements of the Ginori factory, but it is clear that the artist was above all an excellent sculptor in the creation of the putti and masks that decorate the work.