Here we have available an extremely Rare and beautiful Italian Neoclassical Boxwood Marriage or Love Token Snuff Box. Smothered in deep carving we have two Cherubs front and back holding flowers. At each end a portrait of a Man and Woman. The top profusely carved falling in an urn shape to a carved classical plinth at the base. The inside is hollowed out to take snuff, the lid with original brass hinge, the top snaps shut. All this in a piece in perfect original condition measuring 7cm’s across by 6cm’s tall (closed) The colour and patina are stunning for what is truly a museum item dating from around the mid 18th Century. Circa 1740-50
Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Love’s Kiss
In the visual arts the European movement called “neoclassicism” began in Italy around 1750 in Rome, as a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and as a desire to return to the perceived “purity” of the arts of Rome, the more vague perception (“ideal”) of Ancient Greek arts, and, to a lesser extent, 16th-century Renaissance Classicism. Indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which had started in the late 1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the 1760s, with the first luxurious volumes of tightly controlled distribution of Le Antichità di Ercolano.
Here we have available an extremely Rare and beautiful Italian Neoclassical Boxwood Marriage or Love Token Snuff Box. Smothered in deep carving we have two Cherubs front and back holding flowers. At each end a portrait of a Man and Woman. The top profusely carved falling in an urn shape to a carved classical plinth at the base. The inside is hollowed out to take snuff, the lid with original brass hinge, the top snaps shut. All this in a piece in perfect original condition measuring 7cm’s across by 6cm’s tall (closed) The colour and patina are stunning for what is truly a museum item dating from around the mid 18th Century. Circa 1740-50
Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Love’s Kiss
In the visual arts the European movement called “neoclassicism” began in Italy around 1750 in Rome, as a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and as a desire to return to the perceived “purity” of the arts of Rome, the more vague perception (“ideal”) of Ancient Greek arts, and, to a lesser extent, 16th-century Renaissance Classicism. Indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which had started in the late 1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the 1760s, with the first luxurious volumes of tightly controlled distribution of Le Antichità di Ercolano.
