Basin with Enamelled Handles, Decorated with Dragon and Ram Heads

Giuseppe Grisoni · n.d.

Medium

Gouache, heightened with gold paint, over black chalk, on ivory laid paper

Original size

16 × 26.4 cm (6 5/16 × 10 7/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

This exquisite study captures the lavish vocabulary of baroque decorative design, where dragon heads, ram horns, and gleaming enamel-effect ornament converge on a single ceremonial basin with striking visual authority. Giuseppe Grisoni trained in Florence before establishing himself in England, where he worked for aristocratic and royal patrons in the early eighteenth century. His facility with gouache — an opaque, velvety medium — allowed him to simulate the weight and lustre of precious metalwork on paper, and here he heightens that illusion further with gold paint that gives the composition an almost tactile richness. The use of black chalk beneath as an underdrawing, on ivory laid paper, gives the work structural clarity beneath its ornamental exuberance. Held in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the drawing is a rare example of Grisoni working in the tradition of the decorative arts draughtsman, bridging the worlds of fine art and applied design. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates that same interplay of opulence and precision into a medium built to last — the gold accents, the sculptural handles, and the sinuous dragon forms rendered with the same care and deliberateness Grisoni brought to his original gouache study.