Vase (c. 1800): Art, History and Details

Vase (c. 1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre Philippe Thomire (French, 1751–1843).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In 1798, a large quantity of French furnishings was acquired for the Michael Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. Some of these pieces survive in museums like the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. This institution recently staged an exhibition of such French pieces by and attributed to Thomire. Among the objects shown was a bronze vase virtually identical in design to this piece. The body of this vase is decorated with two small reliefs showing male and female centaurs with putti riding on their backs. These reliefs also occur on silver wine coolers produced by the Odiot firm, a major Parisian silversmith under Napoleon's empire. The Odiot firm still owns models of these reliefs that, according to tradition, had been given to Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot by Thomire.

Object facts

• Title: Vase
• Date: c. 1800
• Creator attribution: Pierre Philippe Thomire (French, 1751–1843)
• Culture: France, late 18th-early 19th Century
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze, partially gilt, marble base
• Dimensions: Diameter: 34 cm (13 3/8 in.); Overall: 66.9 cm (26 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1993.175

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Buchanan in memory of Dorothy Tuckerman Draper

Further reading listed by the museum

• “1993 Annual Report.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143–218.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.