Bronze Garden Vase with Two Putti from the Gardens of Versailles 1673

This is Claude Ballin the Elder's "Bronze Garden Vase with Two Putti from the Gardens of Versailles", a design on paper, probably from the mid-17th century. Ballin was a goldsmith to Louis XIV. The drawing presents us with a garden vase, adorned with putti, and fierce lion heads. Intended for the gardens of Versailles, it reminds us that these gardens were designed as stages for political theater, intended to express Louis XIV’s power and dominance. The vase with its opulent design illustrates the cultural and social values of the French court, where art served as a means of conveying wealth, status and, of course, taste. These objects were designed to signal the King’s power and divine right to rule. The putti strike me, though, as symbols of innocence, juxtaposed with the heraldic emblems of power. How might this contrast have been understood at the time? How does it strike us today?