The Medici Vase is a monumental

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...

bell-shaped

krater A krater or crater ( grc-gre, , ''kratēr'', literally "mixing vessel") was a large two-handled shape of vase in Ancient Greek pottery and metalwork, mostly used for the mixing of wine with water. Form and function At a Greek symposium, krat ...

sculpted in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

in the second half of the 1st century AD as a

garden ornament A garden ornament is an item used for garden, landscape, and park enhancement and decoration. Garden ornaments include: * bench *bird baths * bird feeders * birdhouses *columns – cast stone *fire basket * flower box ** window box *fountains ...

for the

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

market. It is now in the

Uffizi Gallery The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

Description

Standing 1.52 metres (approximately 5 feet) tall, with a gadrooned everted lip, it has a deep frieze carved with a mythological bas-relief that defies secure identification: a half-draped female figure

Iphigenia In Greek mythology, Iphigenia (; grc, Ἰφιγένεια, , ) was a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus a princess of Mycenae. In the story, Agamemnon offends the goddess Artemis on his way to the Trojan War by hunting ...

seated below a statue of a goddess on a high plinth, restored as Diana, with heroic warriors on either side, perhaps

Agamemnon In Greek mythology, Agamemnon (; grc-gre, Ἀγαμέμνων ''Agamémnōn'') was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was the son, or grandson, of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husb ...

and either

Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's ''Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, k ...

Odysseus Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysse ...

standing to either side. Two fluted loop handles rise from

satyr In Greek mythology, a satyr ( grc-gre, :wikt:σάτυρος, σάτυρος, sátyros, ), also known as a silenus or ''silenos'' ( grc-gre, :wikt:Σειληνός, σειληνός ), is a male List of nature deities, nature spirit with ears ...

s' heads on either side of the acanthus-leaf carved base, and it stands on a spreading gadrooned base on a low square

plinth A pedestal (from French ''piédestal'', Italian ''piedistallo'' 'foot of a stall') or plinth is a support at the bottom of a statue, vase, column, or certain altars. Smaller pedestals, especially if round in shape, may be called socles. In c ...

History

The vase reappeared in the 1598 inventory of the

Villa Medici The Villa Medici () is a Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, ...

, Rome, but its origin is unknown. Transferred from the villa in 1780, it has ever since been displayed in the Uffizi Gallery, today in the first-floor ''Verone sull’Arno'' overlooking the River Arno. It was often illustrated in engravings, the most famous of which is by

Stefano della Bella Stefano della Bella (17 May 1610 – 12 July 1664) was an Italian draughtsman and printmaker known for etchings of a great variety of subjects, including military and court scenes, landscapes, and lively genre scenes. He left 1052 prints, and sev ...

(1656); he depicted the young Medici heir who would become Grand Duke Cosimo III seated, drawing the vase. Often paired as garden ornaments since the later 17th century with the similar

Borghese Vase The Borghese Vase is a monumental bell-shaped krater sculpted in Athens from Pentelic marble in the second half of the 1st century BC as a garden ornament for the Roman market; it is now in the Louvre Museum. Original Iconography Standing 1. ...

, The difference in height between the Medici vase and the Borghese vase amount to about two centimeters; se
paired early 19th-century bronze vases
Both were available in artificial ''Lithodipyra'' ( Coade stone) from 1771. The Medici Vase from the pair ordered from

Eleanor Coade Eleanor Coade (3 June 1733 – 18 November 1821) was a British businesswoman known for manufacturing Neoclassical architecture, Neoclassical statues, architectural decorations and garden ornaments made of ''Lithodipyra'' or Coade stone for ov ...

for George IV is at the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 ...

(Alison Kelly, "Coade Stone in Georgian Gardens", ''Garden History'' 16.2 (Autumn 1988:109–133) p 111. they are two of the most admired and influential vases from antiquity.Several 17th and 18th-century variants are illustrated in John Goldsmith Phillips, "The Choisy-Ménars Vases" ''The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin'', New Series, 25.6 (February 1967:242–250). The place of the Medici Vase in the

Western canon The Western canon is the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, and ...

of Greek and Roman remains may be gauged by its prominent position in the composed views or ''capricci'' that were a specialty of the Roman painter

Giovanni Paolo Panini Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini (17 June 1691 – 21 October 1765) was an Italian painter and architect who worked in Rome and is primarily known as one of the ''vedutisti'' ("view painters"). As a painter, Panini is best known for his vistas of ...

, to pick the outstanding example.Panini's composed ''View of Roman Monuments'', featuring the Medici Vase, at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

is illustrated in Richard Paul Wunder, "Panini's View of Roman Monuments", ''Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin'' 56 (Winter 1961:54–56) p. 55; in the catalogue of the most influential Roman antiquities in Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, ''Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900 (1981) the Medici Vase is cat. no. 82.

Angelica Kauffman Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann ( ; 30 October 1741 – 5 November 1807), usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, K ...

painted the second Lord Berwick on his

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tuto ...

seated beside the vase.The

portrait of the second Lord Berwick seated beside the vase is at

Attingham Park Attingham Park is an English country house and estate in Shropshire. Located near the village of Atcham, on the B4380 Shrewsbury to Wellington road. It is owned by the National Trust. It is a Grade I listed building. Attingham Park was b ...

(National Trust): noted in Wendy Wassyng Roworth, "Painting for Profit and Pleasure: Angelica Kauffman and the Art Business in Rome" ''Eighteenth-Century Studies'' 29.2 (Winter 1995/1996:225-228) p. 226. Many "copies", sometimes rather loose, were made to decorate palaces or their gardens. The Medici Vase remains a popular subject for imitation in

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainl ...

, for example by

Wedgwood Wedgwood is an English fine china, porcelain and luxury accessories manufacturer that was founded on 1 May 1759 by the potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and was first incorporated in 1895 as Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd. It was rapid ...

. Material on the many later decorative versions of the pairing can be found at

Copies

Bundesarchiv Bild 170-762, Potsdam, Sanssouci, Plastik am Schloß.jpg,

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

Sanssouci Sanssouci () is a historical building in Potsdam, near Berlin. Built by Prussian King Frederick the Great as his summer palace, it is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and ...

Eugène Atget - Versailles, Vase par Cornu - 1963.983.jpg,

Eugène Atget Eugène Atget (; 12 February 1857 – 4 August 1927) was a French ''flâneur'' and a pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to mod ...

photographs the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 19 ...

Krater called the Medici Vase.jpg,

Wilanów Palace Wilanów Palace ( pl, Pałac w Wilanowie, ) is a former royal palace located in the Wilanów district of Warsaw, Poland. Wilanów Palace survived Poland's partitions and both World Wars, and so serves as a reminder of the culture of the Polish ...

, Poland Vase Médicis - copie à Kew Gardens (cropped).jpg,

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its li ...

, London

Notes

References

*Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. ''Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900'' (Yale University Press) 1981: cat. no. 82.

External links

Flickr: "Replica of Medici Vase in Kew Gardens"
— ''photo''.

{{Authority control Hellenistic and Roman sculptural vases

Medici The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Muge ...