A 19th Century Gold Snuffbox With An Allegorical Scene

A rectangular snuffbox in guilloché yellow gold and chased with friezes and ornamental motifs, the lid centered with a cartouche depicting a mythological scene treated in bas relief, representing a winged character draped in the antique style filling his cup with water emerging from a fountain surmounted by the winged horse Pegasus. At his feet a bust and artistic utensils. Foreign work, first half of the 19th century. The name Pegasus means in ancient Greek "of the source" or "the gushing source". Mythology tells that Pegasus causes a spring to gush forth on Mount Helicon where the Muses, protective deities of the arts and sciences, gather. From the 15th century and mainly in the 19th century Pegasus became the symbol of poetry. In this function where the winged horse is allied with poets, its wings are a symbol of a call of inspiration, of the need to rise into celestial solitudes, of the leap of the soul that thought tears from the ground. The theme of this box seems to take up all its elements.
Weight: 52 gr
Letter: MM and 18 K
Hallmark: owl head.
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