Large amphora vase, Florence manufacture Jafet... Lot 79

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 nude 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, nude and cross-legged, one in the act of playing a trumpet and the other a mandola; below the handles are two masks in high relief; in the central part of the vase on both sides is a shaped reserve with the representation of Venus and Cupid; the deities are depicted in an interior on one side and instead by the banks of a stream on the other. Surrounding the painted reserves 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, when he founded his own company. This vase can be attributed to the early period of the Torelli factory precisely because of the use of color borrowed directly from Ginori's decorative stylistic features, but it is clear that the artist was above all an excellent sculptor in the creation of the cherubs and masks that decorate the work.