D'APRÈS FRANCESCO DI BARTOLOMEO BORDONI (Florence 1580 - Paris 1654) XIXe SIÈCLE

PAIR OF EAGLES model of the Fontainebleau castle Patinated bronze, sea green or Maurin green marble H. 33 cm, W. 23 cm ; H. 40 cm with the base E n 1595, Henry IV decided to build several fountains in the gardens of the Château de Fontainebleau, including the Tiber Fountain. Thus, under a contract dated 15 May 1604, the king's building department commissioned Francesco Bordoni to make a set of four ewers to be placed at the corners of the fountain to discharge water into shell-shaped basins (fig. 1) : «To make, form, and getter in bronze four great vazes of the said bronze of two feet and a half in height, with their handles and the spouts aornez and enriched with gaudrons, linges, masks, serpens and to have aornemans and enrichments, which will getter the water by the spout and will be well netted and cizelez, which will be posed on the pieddestaux of the appuy en ballustre of the great fountain of the Tiber to the said garden of the said Fontainebleau". Still in place in 1639-1642, the four vases are described in the inventories of 1695 and 1722 in the Labyrinth grove of the park of the Château de Versailles. They were inventoried in the bosquet de la Reine in the park of the Château de Versailles in 1824 and then transferred to the Louvre in 1884 (fig. 2). The pair of ewers we are presenting is a replica of these vases in reduced proportions. The decorative repertoire is in line with the Florentine mannerism taste for strange characters, crabs, sea monsters, grotesque masks.