The Renaissance Vase
Sèvres Manufactory, after Claude-Aimé Chenavard; reliefs by Antonin-Marie Moine; decoration by Louis-Honoré Boquet (1794-1838; 1796-1849; 1786-1860) · 1835
Assembled from seven separate pieces of porcelain and gilt bronze, this vase is a manifesto of the eighteen thirties taste for the French Renaissance. The handles are fully modelled felines with satyrs crouching at their base. Around the body runs a frieze in low relief after the sculptor Antonin Moine showing two founding scenes of French art: Jean Goujon in his studio presenting the Diana of Anet to Henri the Second and Diane de Poitiers, and Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa in the presence of Francis the First. Both works now live in this museum. Look at the way the ornament borrows from sixteenth-century goldsmiths and enamellers, translated into porcelain and bronze.
The design goes back to the ornamentist Claude-Aimé Chenavard, whose first Renaissance vase was shown in eighteen thirty-two and is now at Fontainebleau. Sèvres repeated it in different colours for the exhibition of the products of the royal manufactories in eighteen thirty-five. The vase entered the manufactory's saleroom in April that year and was delivered to the National Assembly in August eighteen forty-eight, in the first months of the Second Republic. The Mobilier National placed it on deposit at the Louvre in two thousand eleven.
Did You Know? The frieze shows Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa for Francis I, a scene now displayed a few galleries away from the real picture.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.