235.
A PAIR OF ‘FAMILLE ROSE’ AND GILT MOULDED BALUSTER VASES
Qing dynasty, Yongzheng period
22 cm high each
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. nn. 4649, 4656.
The exterior of the two vases combining reserves with a painted decoration of figures inside pavilions surrounded by rocaille frames, with a moulded and painted decoration of flowers in the resulting space, the rim of the mouth with a gilt floral scroll.
A development of the floral relief decoration applied on Dehua pieces from the seventeenth century and richly elaborated by Japanese ceramists towards the end of the seventeenth century (London 1990, pp. 208-210, nn. 208-211), the encrusted floral decoration was extensively used on Chinese porcelain during the Yongzheng era, mainly on that ware explicitly destined to Europe, where this kind of ornament perfectly embodied the Rococo taste at that time at its peak.
This kind of exuberant porcelain become the main source of inspiration for Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775) who designed a famous Meissen porcelain set with encrusted rose stems given as gift around 1735 to Queen Sophie Dorothea of Prussia (1687-17579) and to Maria Josepha Electress of Saxony and Queen of Poland (1699-1757) in 1738 (S. Wittwer, Liaisons Fragile: Exchanges of Gifts between Saxony and Prussia in the Early Eighteenth Century, in M. Cassidy-Geiger (edited by), Fragile Diplomacy, Meissen Porcelain for European Courts ca. 1710-63, New York, 2007, pp. 87-110, pp. 100-101). The technique was later imitated by most of the European porcelain factories.
