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Italian 19th-20th Century Whimsical White Marble Wishing Wellhead with Children
Located in Los Angeles, CA
A very fine and exceptionally carved Italian 19th-20th century Baroque Revival style whimsical white Carrara marble wishing wellhead, raised on an octagonal two-step marble base. The intricately carved marble relief circular wellhead depicting carved figures of dancing and cheerful children (Putti) among vines, flowers and fruits, dancing and playing musical instruments with a backdrop of castles, landscapes, forests and wreaths, Florence, circa, 1900.
Literature:
A similar wellhead was sold by Jan's & Co. Fine French Antiques, Inc. in 1999, provenance the Atkinson/Kirkeby Estate and it is illustrated in "The Estates of Beverly Hills" by Charles Lockwood and Jeff-Hyland, page 150.
Another similar is currently on display at the gardens of "The Elms" mansion a public museum part of the Newport Mansions by The Preservation Society of Newport County in Newport, Rhode Island.
Yet another similar wellhead carved with frolicking putti with musical instruments and a dentil molded rim is located at Cranbrook House, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and is illustrated in B. Israel, Antique Garden Ornament...
Category
Early 1900s Italian Baroque Revival Antique New in USA - Fountains
Materials
Carrara Marble
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Carrara marble mouth fountain
Italy, late 16th century
It measures 13.8 x 31.5 x 18.9 in (35 x 80 x 48 cm)
State of conservation: some small evident gaps and widespread signs of wear due to outdoor exposure. The gray marks crossing it do not come from restoration, but are rather the natural veins of the marble.
This work has some morphological characteristics typically associated with the iconography of the sea monster: an elongated muzzle, sharp teeth, protruding eyes, elongated ears, and a coiled serpent's tail.
An in-depth series of studies on artistic depictions of the sea monster attempted to verify how this symbol evolved in antiquity in the European and Mediterranean contexts and how it gradually changed its image and function over time. The iconography itself is mutable and imaginative and its history is rich with cultural and artistic exchange, as well as the overlapping of ideas. This occurred so much that it is difficult to accurately pinpoint the "types" that satisfactorily represent its various developments.
However, we can try to summarize the main figures, starting from the biblical Leviathan and the marine creature that swallowed Jonah (in the Christian version, this figure was to become a whale or a "big fish", the “ketos mega”, translation of the Hebrew “dag gadol”). Other specimens ranged from the dragons mentioned in the Iliad (which were winged and had legs) to "ketos” (also from Greek mythology), the terrifying being from whose Latinized name (“cetus”) derives the word "cetacean". See J. Boardman, “Very Like a Whale” - Classical Sea Monsters, in Monsters and Demons in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, in Papers presented in Honor of Edith Porada, Mainz am Rhein 1987, pp. 73-84).
In Italy the monster underwent yet further variations: it can be found in Etruscan art on the front of some sarcophagi representing the companion of souls, while among the Romans we find the “Pistrice” (cited by Plinio in Naturalis Historia PLIN., Nat., II 9, 8 and by Virgilio in Eneide: VERG., Aen., III, 427), which appeared in the shape of a stylized hippocampus or a very large monstrous cetacean and evolved into a hideous being with a dragon's head and long webbed fins.
During the Middle Ages, the sea monster was the object of new transformations: at this time, it is often winged, the head is stretched like a crocodile, the front legs are often very sharp fins - sometimes real paws - until the image merges with dragons, the typical figures of medieval visionary spirituality widely found throughout Europe (on this topic and much more, see: Baltrušaitis, J., Il Medioevo fantastico. Antichità ed esotismi nell’arte gotica, Gli Adelphi 1997).
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From the morphological point of view, the "sea monsters" of this period are mostly depicted as hybrid figures, in which the body of a mythological or real being (a hippocampus, a sea snake, a dolphin), is joined to a head with a rather indistinct appearance. It was usually characterized by large upright ears, an elongated snout, sharp teeth and globular, protruding eyes; a complex and indefinite figure, both from the symbolic point of view and from that of its genesis.
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