92.
A PAIR OF ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ BOTTLE VASES
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, early 18th century
24,5 cm high each
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891).
inv. nn. 3762, 3780.
Standing on a low circular foot, the flattened globular body rising to a long cylindrical neck with everted mouth and a rib toward the upper zone, the two handles shaped as ribbons, the painted decoration consisting in sprays of flowers of European taste.
The shape of these vases, with their particular ribboned handles, could be inspired by seventeenth century Venetian glass bottles (C. Shimizu (edited by), L’Odyssée de la porcelaine chinoise. Collections du Musée national de Céramique, Sèvres et due muse national Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, exhibition catalogue, Paris 2003, p. 140, n. 77, for a comparable piece in the Musée national Adrien Dubouché, Limoges).
For a pair of similar bottles in the Museums für Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt am Main, see G. Avitabile – S.G. von der Schulenburg, Chinesisches Porzellan, Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 83, n. 149; see also the comparable piece in the Topkapi Saray, Istabul (R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, 3 voll., London 1986, n. 2181) , the one published by Howard (D.S. Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, the Private Market. Chinese Export Porcelain illustrated from the Hodroff Collection, London 1994, n. 277), another in the Princessehof in Leeuwarden (D.F. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinese Export Porcelain, Chine de Commande, London 1974, n. 107), the examples in the Porzellansammlung in Dresden (inv. n. PO 2342-2343) and the one in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem (W.R. Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics from the Peabody Essex Museum, Yale 2012, n. 35).
