monkey cabbage

This heavy gilt bronze vase by Georges Engrand has an enigmatic representation of three faces of young women emerging from behind a drapery, surrounded by 4 monkeys making a commotion. The faces of the beautiful women are masks and the monkey heads are depicted ugly. It is as if the beauty and youth of the beautiful women magnifies the rudeness and ugliness of the monkeys. It is a kind of allegory on the contrasts between beauty and ugliness, or the subtle and the animal.