249.
A ‘FAMILLE ROSE’ DISH
Qing dynasty, Yongzheng period
20,7 cm diam
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3306.
The personages depicted on this dish could probably be Diao Chan – one of the Four Beauty of Chinese tradition – on the left, and Dong Zhuo on the right. They both were among the numerous characters of the Romance of Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi), the fourteenth century novel probably written by Luo Guanzhong which describes the events occurred from the fall of the Han dynasty to the reunification of the lands in 280.
Diao Chan, literally “sable cicada”, was a young lady of outstanding beauty with a great talent for dancing. The Prime Minister Wang Yu used her to remove the treacherous court official Dong Zhuo, killed by his adoptive son Lu Bu who loved Diao Chan with the same intensity of his father. In a passage of the novel, Dong Zhuo – who is obviously described as older than his son – hurls a spear at Lu Bu, missing him.
