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Artist or Maker: OF EARLY NEO-CLASSICAL STYLE

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Provenance: Acquired from Hugues Roux, 106 Faubourg St. Honoré, Paris, 5 July 1967.

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Notes: INTRODUCTION

Christie's is proud to offer the collection of Mr. Antonio de Sommer Champalimaud, put together over forty years of passionate collecting. Throughout his life Antonio Champalimaud was particularly keen on 18th Century France and adapted his house in the heart of Lisbon to resemble a Parisian hôtel particulier. He found period boiseries and enriched each room with beautiful 18th Century French furniture and objets d'art. He also collected an extraordinary group of French 18th Century paintings by a constellation of the great masters of the period, together with a breathtaking group of Italian vedute by Canaletto and Guardi.

During his lifetime, Antonio Champalimaud twice built up one of the most outstanding financial empires of 20th Century Europe. His first step into the business world was in the development of the Portuguese cement industry from the mid 1930s until the end of World War II. Further extending his activities in the decade following the war by expanding into the iron and steel industry, in 1954 he built the Portuguese National Steel Works and he subsequently branched out into Angola and Mozambique with cement and steel plants.

In 1961, he entered the world of banking - becoming the largest shareholder of Banco Pinto & Sottomayor, at that time one of the most traditional banks in Portugal. His move was mirrored by expansion into the insurance markets, where he came to control two of Portugal's largest insurance companies.

All this was to change on the 25th April 1974 with the Portuguese Revolution. Mr. Champalimaud - like so many - suffered huge losses when the majority of his financial and industrial empire was nationalised by the extreme left government temporarily in power. Not one to be defeated, Antonio Champalimaud rebounded from this by restarting in the cement industry in Brazil in 1976. In the early 1990s, in spite of having received only irrelevant compensation from the Portuguese Government, he bought back the insurance and banking companies he had formerly owned when they were re privatised.

At the turn of the 21st Century, Antonio Champalimaud again found himself to be one of Portugal's most important and influential financial figures, having rebuilt a significant fortune against all the odds. Upon his death in May 2004, at the age of 86, he left the magnanimous gift of the Champalimaud Foundation for research in medical sciences to the Portuguese nation, to be named in full after his parents.

The Champalimaud Foundation will in large part benefit from the sale of this magnificent collection.

Pedro Girao
May 2005

These oak-wreathed and krater-shaped vase-cassolettes with bacchic ram handles reflect the French 'antique' fashion popularised in the 1760s by publications such as Jean-Charles Delafosse's Nouvelle Iconologie Historique, Paris, 1768.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.