216.
A PAIR OF ‘IMARI’ TRIPLE GOURD VASES
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, early 18th century
36,7 cm high each
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. nn. 4713, 4715.
The three globular sections divided by two waists, the cylindrical neck with flared mouth, the exterior of both the vases with a decoration of flowers painted in underglaze blue and overglaze red, green, yellow and black enamels, the waists with a series of stylized flower heads on a geometric ground, the neck with a band of vertical leaves.
A pair of bigger vases with the same shape and a comparable decoration belonged to the collection of Augustus the Strong, (1670-1733), now in the Porzellansammlung in Dresden (E. Ströber, «La maladie de porcelaine». East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig 2001, pp. 88-89, n. 37); a similar vase of the same size is in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (Porcelain for Palaces. The Fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750, exhibition catalogue edited by J. Ayers, O. Impey and J.V.G. Mallet, London 1990, n. 253); see also the piece in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (C.J.A. Jörg, in collaboration with J. Van Campen, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Ming and Qing Dynasties, London 1997, n. 224) and the large example in the British Royal Collection (J. Ayers, Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 2 voll. London 2016, I, p. 265, n. 556).
The term Imari originally identifies a port near Arita, the town in the southern island of Kyushu where the largest ceramic kilns in Japan were located, from which the Dutch ships loaded with porcelain set sail for Europe. The name Imari therefore also served to identify that particular porcelain which had a great commercial success in the second half of the seventeenth century, effectively replacing the Chinese porcelain produced in the Jingdezhen kilns which at the time were in difficulty due to the change of dynasty between Ming and Qing.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Chinese potters began a production with a style of the decoration and the prevalent use of underglaze blue combined with overglaze red and gold clearly inspired by the Japanese models, as exemplified in this pair of vases.
