241.
A PAIR OF ‘FAMILLE ROSE’ DISHES
Qing dynasty, Yongzheng period
24,3 cm diam each
Provenance: Augustus the Strong (1670-1733); Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. nn. 3931, 3933.
The elegant decoration, painted with the enamels of the ‘Famille Rose’ palette, known in Chinese with the alternative names of fencai (“powder colours”) or ruancai (“soft colours”), consists of peonies and chrysanthemums.
Known as the ‘king of flowers’, peony symbolizes rank and wealth (fui gui hua). It was the favourite flower of Wu Zetian, the consort of Emperor Gaozong (r. 649-685), who gave to peony the name mudan and introduced it into the imperial garden. Peony is also associated to the third month of the lunar calendar and to spring.
Chrysanthemum (ju) represents the ninth month and it is therefore associated with autumn. It is considered the “gentleman of flowers” because it was favourite by literati. The famous poet Tao Yuanming (365-427) cultivated chrysanthemums which appear often in his verses as a paradigm of the will to return to nature.
One of the dish has on the back the inscription “N=176/ I” which refers to the collection of August the Strong of Saxony, allowing to date the pieces before 1733.
The Porzellansammlung in Dresden owns five other similar dishes with the same inventory number probably acquired in 1727 (E. Ströber, «La maladie de porcelaine». East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig 2001, p. 76, n. 31); another similar dish is in the collections of Victoria & Albert Museum in London, given as a gift by Queen Victoria in 1860 (R. Kerr, Chinese Ceramics. Porcelain of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), London 1986, p. 109, pl. 89); see also the nearly identical dish with the same number in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. Handbuch, München 1980, p. 244, n. 527), the dish with the same Dresden number in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen (J. Ayers, Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 2 voll. London 2016, I, p. 326, I, nn. 750-760), the example with again the same number published by D. Howard – J. Ayers, China for the West. Chinese Porcelain and other Decorative Arts for Export illustrated from the Mottahedeh Collection, 2 voll., London – New York 1978, I, n. 128, the similar dish in the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore (inv. 42.1239) and the item in the Kunstgewerbe museum in Berlin (inv. M 907).
