Ornamental vessel - Depicting the allegory of Music (after the painting of Eustache Le Sueur)

The round, plain, bell-shaped foot is fixed to the egg-shaped body with a small, indented ring. The spindle neck ends in a richly decorated top rim, which is fixed to the body with a bronze ring. The domed lid is smaller, and has a flat finial. The foot is equipped with a flame-gilt band. The leaf-shaped handles of flame-gilt bronze rise up in a scroll they were fixed to the two sides later, at the shoulder-line. The centre of the vase shows a porcelain painting in a broad, richly and elaborately decorated frame. The main motifs of the gilt frame are Virginia creeper, ivy, olive branch, with a smaller field in the middle of each side. The painting depicts the allegory of Music: three female figures in antique clothing, playing music in a picturesque landscape surroundings. The painting is detailed, elaborately painted, creating an elegic atmosphere. The surface of the vase around the painting is dark blue, with delicate relief gilding at parts: friezes, classic motifs, dolphins, wheat stems, Vitruvian scrolls and rows of various leaved, geometrical motifs. Both the shape and the decoration of the vase follow Antique models this representative object radiates the spirit of growing nostalgia towards Hellenistic culture and Late Classicism.

A companion piece - also by Baldisseroni - was exhibited at the 1884 exhibition of the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris (see: Catalogue d l'exposition retrospective des porcelaines de Vincennes et de Sevres. O. du Santel et E. Williamson. Impr. Reunies Paris, 1884, p.5, No. 1, from the Ceramic Museum in Sevres).