The Funerals of Thais Cup

The cup is decorated with the theme called Funérailles de Thais, although Gio Ponti initially titled it Funérailles de Venus. The decoration is mentioned in a letter by Ponti himself from 1925, a circumstance that allows it to be dated and included among the novelties presented by Richard-Ginori at the Monza and Paris exhibitions of that year. Later, the female figure becomes Thais, perhaps an allusion to the literary character protagonist of the 1890 novel of the same name by Anatole France, adapted into an opera by Jules Massenet (1894) and later also into a futurist film by Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1926). 

A beautiful actress, Thais is here depicted already dead, naked, with shoes on her feet. Surrounded by symbols of luxury and vanity such as the carpet and the mirror, she is supported by two male figures wearing tailcoats. The scene also seems reminiscent of the iconography of the transport of a deceased typical of Etruscan art. The pose of the figures is similar, for example, to a bronze cista handle preserved at the National Archaeological Museum of Florence. The decoration applied to cups and bowls decorated in polychrome with bands inside and outside, and shaded checks at the foot, was subsequently varied in chromatic use and in the neutral background.