China and Greco-Roman Antiquity: Overture to a Study of the Vase in Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract

One of the more remarkable aspects of eighteenth-century European art is the proliferation of vases, both as physical objects and design ideas. From the illustrated volume dedicated to them in Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s historical survey of architecture, Entwurff einer historischen Architectur (1721), to the near ubiquitous presence of porcelain and hardstone vessels in elite eighteenth-century collections, to their mobilization by caricaturists in the latter half of the century, vases were ever present referents in eighteenth-century European culture. Indeed, it has been claimed that the eighteenth century was seized by a veritable “vasomanie.”