Tray

Belli’s version of the Empire style is seen here to be more relaxed and ingratiating than the contemporary French interpretation with its formal, rather static elegance. The friezes of putti are charming for their playfulness, and their dancelike rhythm is echoed in the graceful postures of the erotes on the handles and the figures of Loyalty and Friendship—attended by a faithful dog—on the cover.

The iconography reflects a mixture of influences, including the reliefs of infants made in Rome in the seventeenth century by the Flemish-born sculptor François Duquesnoy, and such lighthearted figures as those painted on the walls of the house of Vettii at Pompeii. The bowl itself—possibly a sugar bowl ow an individual tureen—is of an attenuated neoclassical form well suited to the easy grace of the figures.