Description
A good Staffordshire pottery pearlware figure of a standing lion with paw on globe.
This figure has very strong decorative appeal and the modelling of the head is exceptional..
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 1815 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.