24.
A ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ ‘KRAAK’ DISH
Ming dynasty, Wanli period
20,8 cm diam.
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4032.
The dish is painted in the well with a scholar-official wearing a robe embroidered with a bird rank badge and his attendant seated by a table with a guqin musical instrument in a fenced garden before a lakeshore framed by rockwork.
Playing the seven-string guqin or zither is one the Four Scholarly Accomplishments or “Four Arts” (siyi) which also include weiqi (Chinese chess), shu (calligraphy) and hua (painting). The Four Arts were recorded as early as the Tang dynasty by Zhang Yuanyan. However, it was not until Su Dongbo (1037-1101) and his circle of friends during the Song dynasty, that the ideal of the literatus as well-rounded painter, calligrapher, musician and ‘chess’-player fully developed.
The cavetto is painted with a variety of auspicious flowers within divided sections in the ‘kraak’ style.
This peaceful scene related to the official’s ideal of retirement from government duties to pursue gentlemanly pastimes such as contemplation and playing the qin.
A related ‘Kraak’ blue and white dish painted with a scholar is in the British Museum, London (J. Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of the Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London 2001, n. 11:114).
Two other dishes with a similar decoration which presents a lady instead of a scholar are in Palazzo Pitti, Florence, belonged to the Medici collection at least from the late sixteenth century (F. Morena, Dalle Indie orientali alla corte di Toscana. Collezioni di arte cinese e giapponese a Palazzo Pitti, Florence 2005, pp. 59-60, nn. 26-27).
See also the similar dish, also decorated with a female figure instead of a literati, in the Amaral Cabral collection, Lisbon (M.A. Pinto de Matos, Azul e branco da China. Porcelana ao tempo dos descobrimentos. Colecção Amaral Cabral, Lisbon 1997,p. 146, n. 57) and the comparable fragment in the murals (embrechados in portuguese) in the garden of the Fronteira Palace built in 1640 in Lisbon (T. Canepa, Kraak porcelain. The rise of global trade inthe late 16th and early 17th centuries, London 2008, p. 55, fig. 36).
