Description
Antique Staffordshire pottery figure of a Medici model Lion on a fabulous jazzy colored decorated base. This figure has very strong decorative appeal.
This lion on a base is modelled from the Medici Lions which are two lion sculptures placed around 1600 at the Villa Medici, Rome, Italy, and since 1789 displayed at the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. The sculptures depict standing male lions with a sphere under one claw, looking to the side. The Medici lions have also been copied, or strongly inspired new sculptures, and this pottery figure from circa 1810 is such a piece.
The image of the dominant Lion King of the Beasts had a resonance with Great Britain in the 18th and 19th century during it rise to power as the major Empire of its time.
Countless images in pottery were produced by the British potters especially in Staffordshire. This particular example is one of my favorites as it is standing on one of the most jazzy bases I have seen.
The paradoxical aspect between the serious modelling of the lion is then completely transformed by the decoration of a the childish and garishly coloured base. This is the joy of Staffordshire pottery where the naive meets the classical to evolve into its own special art.