146.
A ‘FAMILLE VERTE’ VASE AND COVER
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, early 18th century
60 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3940.
The rich decoration on this vase, consisting in a series of panels alternating floral compositions and the depiction of real and imaginary animals, is rather common on Kangxi porcelain.
The painters in Jingdezhen had certainly at their disposal printed models to find inspiration for this kind of decoration. Regarding the animals, the Sancai tuhui (“Collected Illustrations of the Three Realms”), the encyclopedia compiled by Wang Qi and his son Wang Siyi, originally published in 1609 and later reprinted many times, includes in volumes 91, 92 and 93 a number of detailed illustrations accompanied by brief explicatory text of real and fantastic creatures, some of them could be associated with the animals depicted on this vase.
Large vases such as this, with the exuberant decoration painted with the brilliant enamels of the ‘Famille Verte’ (this palette is known in Chinese as yingcai, “strong colours”), were much admired in Europe because they perfectly integrated in the Baroque interiors of the princely palaces between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Similar vases were registered in the inventory of the collection of Augustus the Strong (1670-1733) in Dresden compiled in 1721 (see E. Ströber, «La maladie de porcelaine». East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig 2001, pp. 66-67, n. 26).
