 The lower part, which was not original, was influenced by the Torlonia Vase, a celebrated neo-Attic Roman marble that Piranesi knew from the collection of Cardinal Albani.It similarly stands on three lions' legs – which in the case of the Torlonia Vase were 16th-century additions.The vase was restored and/or rebuilt by the artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from a large number of Roman fragments from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, where Gavin Hamilton was excavating in the 1770s.