42.
A LARGE WUCAI OPENWORK VASE
Ming dynasty, Wanli period
43,5 high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4121
The vase is decorated in the wucai style palette with underglaze blue and overglaze red, green, yellow, brown and black enamels. The skilful craftsmanship of the potter is evident in the complex pierced openwork design around the body and neck, which would have been created when the clay was leather hard before the first firing.
The body is decorated with phoenix in flight amidst lingzhi-shaped cloud scrolls.
The phoenix has come to represent the empress and the lingzhi fungus is representative of the wish for immortality or long life.
Around the shoulders are cartouches enclosing birds perched on branches bearing auspicious fruit including lychees, peaches, pomegranates and persimmons; these alternate with a honeycomb diaper ground enclosing auspicious plants. The neck is decorated with pierced ruyi heads, symbolic of the wish for long life, enclosing cash diaper patterns. The neck is painted on either side in underglaze blue with the auspicious shou longevity character flanked by two moulded lionmask handles which would have suspended loose rings, now missing, all reserved against basketweave diaper pattern, below the plantain leaves.
The vase has been reduced andoriginally the leaves would have alternated at the top with pierced sections decorated with butterflies and flowers, below the galleried rim with pierced ruyi-heads; for an example of a similar complete vase (49,5 cm high, also missing the ring handles) in the Qing Court Collection, Palace Museum, Beijing, see Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours. The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong 1999, pp. 60-61, n. 56; another reduced example is in the British Museum, London (J. Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of the Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London 2001, n. 11:167: the author puts in evidence the derivation of the phoenix design on the vase by contemporary kesi textiles).
