168.
A ‘FAMILLE VERTE’ DISH
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, late 17th–early 18th century
39,9 cm diam
Apocryphal Da Ming Chenghua nianzhi six-character mark.
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3930.
The dish is a decorated with Magu holding a ruyi scepter together with a spotted fawn towing a cart with a wine jar covered by a lotus leaf and the wheels with radiating ruyi heads, three red bats flying around her head, beside a female attendant holding a staff with scrolls and lingzhi funguses. On the exterior of the wall a frieze of stylized shou characters (“longevity”).
The name Magu literally means “Hemp Lady”. This goddess is always depicted as a young beautiful lady accompanied, as in in this dish, by attributes related to longevity. The most ancient text in which she is described is the Shenxian Zhuan, a commentary about Daoist immortals traditionally attributed to the scholar Ge Hong who lived in the third-fourth century. Magu is also associated with very long fingernails, a characteristic which was immortalized in very popular verses by the great poet Li Bai (701-762).
For a comparable dish in the Palace Museum, see Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours. The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong 1999, p. 112, n. 102; another nearly identical dish is in the Shanghai Museum (see Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Shanghai 1996, pl. 98); see also the related dish in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sidney (J. Thompson, Chinese Porcelain in the Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in “Orientations”, 31, 2000, 7, pp. 96-103, p. 102).
