302.
A ‘EN GRISAILLE’ AND GILT DISH
Qing dynasty, Qianlong period, 1745 circa
23,2 cm diam
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3323.
The European print which inspired the scene on this dish, with a man conducting a goat carrying on its back a lady followed by an half-naked boy with a flute in his left hand, is not been identified yet. However, the painted composition shows some analogies with the Count Brühl’s Tailor and his Wife, a subject in the repertory of Meissen porcelain sculpture modeled around 1740 by Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1696-1749) (see the two Meissen pieces which form this group in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, 64.101.132: differently from the scene on the Chinese dish, in the three-dimensional Meissen prototype also the tailor is depicted on the back of a goat, while his wife has a baby in her hands). The composition could be cautiously also considered a modern version of the biblical event of The Flyght to Egypt.
The decoration on the rim is an interpretation of the laub-und-bandelwerk motif which was very popular on the porcelain production of the Viennese Du Paquier factory between 1730 and the mid eighteenth century (the dish with a similar central scene published by F. and N. Hervouët – Y. Bruneau, La porcelaine des Compagnie des Indes a décor occidental, Paris 1986, p. 199, n. 9.17, has a different border).
