Townley Vase

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The Townley Vase^[1] is a large Roman marble vase of the second century CE, discovered by the Scottish antiquarian and dealer in antiquities Gavin Hamilton in excavating a Roman villa^[2] at Monte Cagnolo, near Lanuvio, the ancient Lanuvium, in Lazio, southeast of Rome. The ovoid vase has volute handles in the manner of a pottery krater. It is carved with a deef frieze in bas-relief, occupying most of the body illustrating a Bacchanalian procession. Its name comes from the English collector Charles Townley, who purchased it from Hamilton in 1774 for £250. Townley's collection, long on display in his London house in Park Street, was bought for the British Museum after his death in 1805.

In the nineteenth century it was often imagined that Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) was inspired by the Townley Vase, though modern critics suggest instead that the inspiration was more generic.^[3]

Copies of the Townley Vase were made in plaster and imitation marble throughout the nineteenth century. At the turn of the twentieth century terracotta versions were made by Manifattura di Signa in Italy. Between the World Wars, table lamps modelled after the Townley Vase identified "cultured" households.