Soft paste Sèvres porcelain teapot with a white and gilded spout and handle. Dark blue ground and gilded decoration with reserves containing self-portraits of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Their names are inscribed in gold on the underside. The portraits, which are painted in opaque tones of brown, red and dark grey, are set against a fawn background. The teapot has a domed cover with a gilt berry and leaf finial, decorated with four reserves containing trophies of the arts. The illustrations represent painting (a painter's palette and maul stick, and an easel), drawing (a book, a parchment roll, callipers and a ruler), sculpture (an easel, mallet, bust and rulers) and architecture (a Corinthian capital, rulers and a plumb line).

In the same way that sets of portraits of historic personages painted on porcelain were a popular form of decoration in the early nineteenth century, so too sets of portraits of artists proved another fashionable trend. The fashion can probably be related to the taste for forming collections of painted self-portraits.

Text adapted from French Porcelain: In the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London, 2009