A French Late Nineteenth Century Cast Iron Urn

A very fine French late nineteenth century green patinated cast iron urn after a model by Claude Ballin for Louis XIV’s gardens at Château de Versailles, vase-shaped urn surmounted either side by a winged putto with curly hair who, with his hands on his cheeks, rests his arms on the ribbon-wrapped rim of the vase while staring at one another, each putto is seated upon a handle shaped as a plumed lion’s head with a ring in its mouth, the neck of the vase-shaped urn with a basket weave border above the main body centred by a circular medallion enclosing a fasces surrounded by a laurel leaf spray, the lower fluted body of the urn on a stepped circular foot on a square base which rests upon a rectangular plinth mounted at centre by a laurel leaf wreath upon a stepped square base
France, date circa 1890-1900
Height 163 cm, width 84 cm.
This fine late nineteenth century cast iron urn is after a model for a set of urns designed by Claude Ballin (1615-78) for Louis XIV’s newly landscaped gardens at Château de Versailles, where six were originally placed on the southern terrace of the northern parterre between 1667 and 1669. Ballin, whose nickname ‘the Great Ballin’, was appointed master goldsmith and Orfèvre Ordinaire du Roi and was responsible for much of the interior decoration at Versailles. In, or shortly before, 1665 he was commissioned to design a set of vases or urns for the large and newly created northern and southern parterres which had been recently designed and laid out by the royal landscape architect André Le Nôtre (1613-1700).
For the sum of 7,200 livres, in December 1665 the sculpteur-fondeur du Roi Ambroise Duval had completed the task of creating six bronze urns of this design, each approximately 85 cm high, which were cast from wax models, based on Ballin’s original drawing. The sculptors François or Michel Anguier and Nicolas Legendre had been responsible for creating the wax models, of which four were supplied by Legendre and two by Anguier. It is almost certain that the model for the present urn was that which was referred to in 1669 in La Promenade de Versailles by Madeleine de Scudéry, who wrote: “on the balustrade of the first flowerbed”, among which are those “where we see small children leaning on the handles of the vases, who, with childlike attention, seem to admire the flowers with which they are filled.”
The urn, which is distinguished by a pair of putti who face one another while seated upon plumed lion head masks, is one of a number of designs by Ballin for the bronze vases destined for the gardens of Versailles. Other designs included those with satyr-heads and wolf-head handles, while another set featured siren-shaped handles as well as handles that were supported by two grimacing faces. A painting by Étienne Allegrain (1644-1736), painted between 1688 and 1695 (in the Musée national des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon), offers a partial view of the northern parterre, where one can see ten vases, of which two of the same design as here are flanked by other urns including those with handles formed by a satyr’s head or with handles decorated with a wolf’s head. Another pair have handles formed as a siren; two are decorated with medallion shaped handles, while another pair feature handles supported by two grimacing faces.
Claude Ballin’s work at Versailles reflects the synthesis of art and architecture that defined Louis XIV’s ambitious expansion of the royal estate during the 1660s and 1670s. Though primarily known as a goldsmith to the king, Ballin’s contribution to sculpture and design was central to the decorative scheme of the palace and its gardens. His designs for a set of monumental bronze urns served as focal points within the strictly ordered geometry of André Le Nôtre’s landscape. The urns balanced ornamental flourish with architectural precision, often integrating classical motifs such as acanthus leaves, masks, garlands, and, as we see here, putti - figures symbolic of abundance and vitality.
Ballin’s design for our model along with four others, was subsequently reproduced in etchings by Jean Le Pautre (1618-82) during the following decade, with individual prints dated 1672 and 1673. The Metropolitan Museum, New York owns a pen and ink wash by an unknown hand executed in 1673 or soon after, based on Le Pautre’s engraving. Interestingly Le Pautre’s engraving shows a royal emblem on the central medallion adorning the urn’s body. This emblem was removed in 1794, during the French Revolution, and in its place the sculptor Boichard modelled on one side a fasces, as we see here. A fasces is composed of a bundle of rods enclosing either a single or double axe head with straps. It was the emblem of the higher Roman magistrate and came to be a symbol of justice personified.
Through Le Pautre’s prints, Ballin’s urns became extremely popular throughout Europe and are known in numerous seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century copies, counting amongst them versions made in terracotta, marble and bronze. Among such examples is a pair cast in bronze which can be found in the grounds at Kingston Lacy in Dorset (now owned by the National Trust), a lavish seventeenth century mansion that was redesigned during the first half of the nineteenth century by Sir Charles Barry (who also redesigned the Houses of Parliament in London).
During 1851-1852 a further eighteen bronze vases after Ballin’s original designs were cast by the French engineer and fondeur Christophe-François Calla (1802-84) and delivered to Versailles to complete the series of original vases made after models by Ballin. Each bore the name of Calla and was dated 1852. Whilst most were reproductions of the urns that were made for the northern terrace of the southern parterre, three of the models, including ours, matched those on the southern terrace of the northern parterre. The bronze used by Calla for this large-scale commission came from a colossal horse’s head, which itself was a replica of an equestrian statue of Louis XIV cast in 1831 by Auguste-Jean-Marie Carbonneaux from a model by Jean-Baptiste Debay for the city of Montpellier. Not long after that a number of other versions of our model were made in cast iron, a material that was made possible due to advances during the Industrial Revolution and one that was cheaper to produce than either bronze or marble but at the same time it was equally durable. Reproductions in cast iron also made it possible for a new generation of the rising bourgeoisie to afford a copy of an urn from Versailles to adorn their own gardens. At the same time a number of such copies were commissioned specifically to be integrated amongst the many new public parks that were appearing for instance in Paris, as a result of Baron Haussman’s redesigning of the city landscape.
A number of French foundries responded to this new demand, amongst whom one can cite the foundry belonging to Antoinne Durenne (1822-95) at Sommevoire who cast a number of identical urns to ours and is believed to have been responsible for those of the same model commissioned by Sir Richard Wallace (from whom the Wallace Collection in London takes its name), for his residence at Château de Bagatelle. Durenne’s enterprise eventually merged with the nearby foundry at Val d’Osne in the Haute-Marne, which also cast urns of the same model after Ballin’s originals. The Val d’Osne foundry, which had previously been run by Gustave Henri Barbezat (1818-67) produced a variety of illustrated catalogues, advertising a wide range of their cast iron products. Durenne’s foundry also produced a series of similar illustrated catalogues, which like those from Val d’Osne featured a range of urns after Ballin’s models for Versailles. However, this exact model does not appear in any of their known catalogues prior to the 1880s, thus one can assume that this particular replica model is of a later date, circa 1890-1900.