3-008-582 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: vase belonging to Her Majesty the Queen, exhibited by Messrs. Hunt and Roskell, 1862. Vase '...of oxydized silver, chased en repoussé by Antoine Vechte, and placed upon a pedestal which is ornamented by pillars of cornelian and concave slabs of lapis lazuli...[depicting the] fight of the Centaurs and Lapithae... one of the Centaurs is seen attempting to carry away the bride, whilst Ixion...attacks the Centaur, who, with great fury twisting his horse's foreleg round the muscular calf of the hero, endeavours to effect his escape with his prize. The shoulders of the vase are alive with this wild commotion; two of the women of the Lapithae seem to have escaped to a safer eminence and form the handles...whilst above at the very summit sits Imperial Jove, crowned and bearing a sceptre, and evidently not unpleased at the effects of his power...we have the peaceful love of Pirithous and his wife exhibited in the lower portion of the vase by two very graceful figures, between whom a little Cupid is slyly couching...At the sides two Cupids mounted upon Centaurs exhibit the power of love, whilst in the two panels Centaurs sporting with bacchanals delicately hint at that intoxication and indulgence which led to the fray'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.