280.
A ‘FAMILLE ROSE’ BALUSTER VASE WITH GILT METAL MOUNT
the vases Qing dynasty, Qianlong period, 1740 circa; the mount European, late 18th century
30 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4146.
This vase certainly belonged to a five-pieces set, thus forming a garniture de chaminée, together with other two similar items and two vases of a different shape.
The design of its decoration, with a parrot holding a sprig of cherry in its talons and standing chained to his perch suspended from a group of stylized leaves, is traditionally attributed to the workshop of Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759), a Dutch artist who produced some very successful drawings used on Chinese and Japanese porcelain (C.J.A. Jörg, Pronk Porcelain, exhibition catalogue, Groningen 1980).
However, its invention is still today an argument of debate. The parrot became a popular subject since the late sixteenth century on European engravings of exotic inspiration, such as those published by Adriaen Collaert in 1580 (H. Espir, European Decoration on Oriental Porcelain 1700-1830, London 2005, pp. 143-144). In the following periods, including the whole eighteenth century, the motif of a parrot on a perch was faced by many artists, such as the Dutch painter Jan Weenix (1670-1719) who inserted a composition very similar to the one on the Chinese vase here discussed in his painting entitled Park with Country House now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inv. SK-A-4098). It is therefore impossible, until new documents will be found, to precisely attributed the source of inspiration for Chinese porcelain decorators who faced in about the same period the theme of the parrot on a perch also in a more dynamic way, as exemplified by the ‘blue and white’ cup and saucer in the Victoria & Albert Museum, which seems to derive by an earlier decoration on Meissen porcelain (W.B. Honey, Dresden china: an introduction to the study of Meissen porcelain, London 1946, p. 206, note 294), in turn inspired by engravings realized by artists such as Petrus Schenk the Younger (1693-1775).
Chinese painters already introduced the theme of the parrot on similar metal pedestal in the late Ming dynasty. See for example the painting in the Shanghai Museum by Chen Hongshou (1599-1652), entitled Reclining on an Incense Fumigator.
Three vase with different shape but the same decorative motif are in the Terruzzi Collection (A. Scarpa – M. Lupo (edited by), Fascino del Bello. Opere d’arte dalla Collezione Terruzzi, exhibition catalogue (Rome), Milan 2007, n. IV.43); see also the five pieces garniture decorated with this motif in the Peabody Essex Museum (W.R. Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics from the Peabody Essex Museum, Yale 2012, p. 248, n. 123).
