Three Vases with Lid

These three splendid vases, made in 1715, only five years after the Meissen manufactory was founded, were part of a garniture de cheminée sent in 1725, along with three hundred other porcelain objects, by Augustus II the Strong (1670-1733), duke and prince-elector of Saxony and king of Poland, to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy (1666-1732), king of Sardinia. The garniture, formerly part of the collection of Augustus II the Strong in Dresden, originally included seven pieces, consisting of “three pieces large vases, one piece with two handles, and two pieces without handles, ornamented with figures and flowers, finely worked, application of gold and enameled silver, two smaller vases, two bottles.” The garniture remained in the Royal Palace of Turin until the 19th century, as documented in the palace inventory of 1815, in which seven white porcelain vases were mentioned in the “alcove room.”
In the subsequent inventory of 1823 there were only five vases.
In 1877 three vases were deposited at the Museo Civico di Torino with attribution to Capodimonte, along with other objects and furniture from the Royal Palace. In 1880 they were presented at the Fourth National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Turin, and on December 5, 1929 they were withdrawn from the Civic Museum of Turin by order of the Prince of Piedmont Umberto II (1904-1983) “for the arrangement of a room in the Royal Palace.” Sold at a 1966 auction in Geneva and put back on the market in 1998, these three specimens constitute, together with the two vases still preserved in the Royal Palace of Turin, the garniture da cheminée donated by Augustus II the Strong to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy as it appeared in the year 1823. The three vases were donated to the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in 2017 together with the Zerilli-Marimò collection.