On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Pair of Vases
Not on view
This pair of vases, similar to a series at Versailles, may have been acquired by a Grand Tourist during his stay in Rome. There, artisans reworked antique columns of porphyry, a hard and sought-after purplish Egyptian stone traditionally associated with imperial power. Louis XIV commissioned his set from Roman carvers to decorate the Hall of Mirrors, alternating them with versions in alabaster. The Leiden cloth merchant Pieter de la Court mentioned seeing forty-four vases of "all sorts of marbles and sizes" in the Hall of Mirrors in 1700.
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