Cassandra2.0003

Josiah Wedgwood, "Cassandra Grasping the Palladium", ceramic relief plaque, described in the French Catalogue of 1788, item no. 33; illustrated in Meteyard, Memorials of Wedgwood, pl. XXVI, no. 1; and treated in C. Macht (1957), Classical Wedgwood Designs (New York, Barrows), 38-39.

Although the depiction is presented by Wedgwood as "une belle figure en basse, tirée d'une gemme du cabinet du Roi de France," and overtly styled as Cassandra c. Palladium, the model in fact depicts an ecstatically Dionysiac scene of maenad erotically poised opposite a herm (Priapus?) and stroking a female flautist (hetaira). Macht observes: "Wedgwood definitely gives the source, yet it is not the correct one. This could be an uncatalogued relief, but it is more likely an error since the main figures in the ancient bas-relief and the eighteenth-century pottery relief are so much alike." (p. 39)

The model is identified by Macht as Visconti-Comte de Clarac, no. 200.