Elephant Candelabrum Vase (Vase à Tête d'Eléphant)
Manufacture nationale de Sèvres (Design attributed to Jean-Claude Duplessis (French, c. 1695–1774); Painted by Pierre-Louis-Philippe Armand (French,…)
1757–58
- Medium
- Soft-paste porcelain, polychrome enamels, and gilding
- Classification
- Ceramics
- Dimensions
- 38.5 × 25 × 14.7 cm (15 1/8 × 9 13/16 × 5 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Sèvres
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Applied Arts of Europe
- Credit line
- Joseph Maier and Arthur Lewis Liebman Memorial: Gift of Kenneth J. Maier, M.D.
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This model is one of the more exotic forms created by Jean-Claude Duplessis. The elephants’ trunks originally supported double candle sockets that are now missing. The idea of combining elephant heads with a vase may have derived from a Ming dynasty Chinese vase or a Meissen candelabrum. The Sèvres painter Pierre-Louis-Philippe Armand accentuated the sensuous qualities of the elephants by framing their brown eyes with pink lids and long eyelashes.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
