Following a generalised fashion in European royal palaces during the Baroque period, porphyry, with its characteristic reddish-purple tinge, was used to establish a sense of uninterrupted continuity with the remote imperial past. These vases added sumptuousness and splendour to palace rooms, including the examples that decorated the Hall of Mirrors in the Alcázar in Madrid. The form and decoration of this example combine curving striations and gadroons. It is the pair to another similar one, also in the Prado (O491).