187.
A PAIR OF FAMILLE VERTE STEM CUPS, GOA ZU BEI
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, late 17th century
11,7 cm high each
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. nn. 3801, 3810.
The eight-faceted cups with flared rim decorated to the exterior with eight compositions of seasonal flowers with birds and insects inside panels, one of the cup with the stem painted with a blue stylized meander and a band of black flowers on a green ground, the other with the same black and green frieze and a band with red geometric motifs.
An identical stem cup is illustrated by Jacquemart and Le Blant in their seminal book about porcelain (A. Jacquemart – E. Le Blant, Histoire Artistique, Industrielle et Commerciale de la Porcelaine, Paris 1862, pl. 5, fig. 4). Considering the very close relationship between the Duke of Martina and the French connoisseur Albert Jacquemart, it is not impossible that the illustrated stem cup after the publication of the book entered in the collection of the Neapolitan nobleman.
For a very similar stem cup in the Museum of east Asian Art in Bath, see B.S. McElney, The Museum of east Asian Art. Inaugural Exhibition. Volume I. Chinese Ceramics, Bath 1993, n. 184; see also G. Avitabile – S.G. von der Schulenburg, Chinesisches Porzellan, Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 141, n. 288, for another similar item in the Museum für Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt am Main; two other comparable examples are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. nn. 1955-50-220, 221).
