This superb work of antiquity must indeed be seen, to be sufficiently
estimated: the great failure of that branch of the fine arts which is
employed to represent all the rest, is in the inadequate idea of size
which it must necessarily give where the objects to be represented are
large.
The marble vases now extant are, of course, comparatively few in number,
and this is, perhaps, excepting the Medicean, the finest of them all. The
best representations of it are those in Piranesi, three in number. One
great, and conspicuous beauty of this vase consists in the elegantly
formed handles, and in the artful insertion of the extreme branches of
the vine-stems which compose them, into its margin, where they throw off
a rich embroidery of leaves and fruit. A lion's skin, with the head and
claws attached, form a sort of drapery, and the introduction of the
thyrsus, the lituus, and three bacchanalian masks on each side, complete
the embellishments. The capacity of this vase is 103 gallons, its
diameter 9 feet, its pedestal of course modern. It was discovered in
1770, in the draining of a mephitic lake within the enclosure of the
Villa Adriana, called Laga di Pantanello. Lord Warwick had reason to be
proud of his vase, which had this peculiarity, that, whereas almost every
other object of art in the kingdom has been catalogued and sold over and
over again, this vase passed (after a sufficiently long parenthesis of
time) _immediately from the gardens of Adrian to his own!_
_Blackwood's Magazine._
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Manners & Customs of all Nations.
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