451.
A PAINTED ENAMEL BOTTLE WITH IVORY AND GOLD COVER
Qing dynasty, Kangxi mark and of the period, circa 1720
21,3 cm high
Kangxi yuzhi four-characters mark.
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4966.
This bottle is a superb example of the now exceedingly rare production of enamelled metal objects realized during the late Kangxi period in the workshops of the imperial palace in Beijing.
The technique of enamel painting on metal originated in Europe, adopted in various production centres including Limoges, Nuremberg, Genéva and Berlin. Its introduction in China dates back to the end of the seventeenth century, thanks to the arrival, among many other things, of some European artefacts of that type mainly used as a diplomatic gift by Jesuit missionaries. The technique was first tested in Guangzhou (Canton), the important port city in southern China which in 1687 opened to trade with foreigners by imperial concession.
Kangxi immediately showed a strong interest in novelties from Europe, especially regarding scientific instruments but also decorative arts, consequently stimulating a similar production in the imperial workshops of the Forbidden City (Zaobanchu), located very close to his personal living quarters. Among the gifts of European enamelled wares he received during his long reign, the one by Giuseppe Castiglione in 1715 (G. Loehr, Missionary-artists at the Manchu Court, in “Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society”, XXXIV, (1962-1963) 1964, pp. 51-67, p. 55), gained great interest in the court as Matteo Ripa wrote in 1716 (M. Gillingham, Chinese Painted Enamels, exhibition catalogue, Oxford 1978, p. 6). In 1719 the Jesuit priest Jean-Baptiste Gravereau (also known as Chen Zhongxin) was sent by the Viceroy of Guangdong to Beijing to explicitly teach enamelling techniques. In few years, the Chinese workshops in Beijing were able to reach a remarkable level of quality, considering that already in 1721 gifts of enamelled pieces were given to two European embassies (G. Loehr, Missionary-artists at the Manchu Court, in “Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society”, XXXIV, (1962-1963) 1964, pp. 51-67, pp. 56-57).
This bottle, and the other similar artifacts painted with polychrome enamels on metal made in the last years of the reign of Kangxi, are often decorated with a new palette of a partially European inspiration, which usually cover all the metal surface. Compared to the vivacity of the ‘Famille Verte’ (yangcai) prevailed until then, this new range of colours was characterized by softer tones and pastel shades obtained by mixing the white enamel with other coloured enamels. The pink enamel derived from gold oxide which makes its first appearance in those years, had an immediate success, in the production destined to the internal market as in that intended to be exported to Europe. Known in Chinese as falangcai (literally “foreign colors”), this new palette was used not only on metal but also on porcelain and stoneware, during the reign of Kangxi applied in Beijing on undecorated ware made in Jingdezhen and Yixing expressly at this aim. The few still existing falangcai porcelains enamelled in Beijing and explicitly intended for the court of Kangxi are unanimously considered among the most successful in the entire Chinese porcelain production.
The best pieces decorated with falangcai enamels on metal and porcelain among those destined to the court present the Kangxi yuzhi mark (“made for the imperial use of Kangxi”).
The floral decoration on this bottle shows formal features clearly extraneous to the traditional Chinese iconographic repertoire, with its flowers and buds that cannot be associated with any botanical species used as decoration on Chinese art, despite some distant affinities with the description of chrysanthemums and lotus flowers. It is therefore more than plausible that it is a Chinese interpretation of a foreigner decorative motif, a hypothesis also supported by the Baroque style in which the stems and leaves are represented.
Formal affinities can be noted between the floral decoration on this bottle and the representation of the passion flower, a plant native to South America which was discovered by Europeans only at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The particular shape of this flower was since then related to the symbols of the crucifixion of Christ by the missionaries, who therefore called it flos passionis, “flower of passion”, a name later transformed by Linnaeus into Passiflora.
Imported and cultivated in Europe, appreciated for the beauty of its inflorescences, the passion flower was represented many times starting from the mid-sixteenth century in herbaria and naturalistic treatises, among which the Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus by Francisco Hernández (1651) in which appears the table entitled Granadillæ Flos et Fructus. The comparison between this illustration and the decoration on the bottle here discussed does not reveal immediate analogies (the depiction of the three stigmas connected with the three nails symbolizing the passion of Christ is missing), but a certain affinity cannot be denied. If this suggestion were confirmed, the author of this decoration would have depicted on the body two phases of the passion flower’s life (bud and flower), while the oval ivory cover could be considered a representation of the fruit, as it precisely appears in the quoted print in the volume of Francisco Hernández.
Hypothesizing that the Jesuits at the service of the Chinese court could suggest the use of European engravings of a scientific nature for the decoration of the painted enamel artefacts made inside the imperial workshops of the Forbidden City in the very last years of the reign of Kangxi seems more than possible. Just as it is certain that Kangxi appreciated not only foreign techniques but also European-style decorations, contextually not wanting to accept the introduction into the court of explicit references to Christianity.
If the hypothesis formulated here were to find further evidence, this bottle would constitute an exciting moment of knowledge transmission between very distant and different cultural fields, from Latin America where the passion flower originally grows, to Europe where it was studied and depicted, and then to imperial China where it was known thanks to the curiosity of Kangxi and the intuition of the Jesuit missionaries.
The Palace Museum in Beijing owns a series of painted enamelled pieces from the Kangxi period (Compendium of Collections in the Palace Museum. Enamels II. Cloisonné in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Beijing 2011, nn. 110-128), and among them a similar bottle decorated with Chinese style flowers on a yellow ground (n. 116).
A Kangxi yuzhi marked bottle with a similar shape and the same European-inspired style of decoration but on a white ground, is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei (W.C. Fong – J.C.Y. Watt (edited by), Possessing the Past. Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, exhibition catalogue, New York 1996, p. 513); see also L. Vinhais – J. Welsh (edited by), China of All Colours. Painted Enamels on Copper, London 2015, pp. 18-19, for another white ground bottle in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.
