407.
A SILVER-INLAID BRONZE TRIPOD INCENSE BURNER, DING
Qing dynasty, 17th-18th century
5,5 x 17 x 13 cm
Apocryphal Da Ming Xuande nianzhi six-character mark; Shisou two-character mark.
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4852.
The incense burner (xianglu), with a shape derived by archaic ding bronze vessels but with a flattened body, has handles shaped as an extreme stylization of a dragon, the external surface with a floral decoration inlaid with gold and silver.
The combination of the inlaid two-character Shisou mark in clerical script with the cast six-character Xuande mark is rare. Robert D. Mowry (R.D. Mowry, China’s Renaissance in Bronze. The Robert H. Clague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900, exhibition catalogue, Phoenix 1993, n. 16, p. 92), commenting an incense burner in the Clague collection with these two marks together, argues that the inlaid Shisou signature is probably a later addition. In any case, it is presumable that Shisou, or the workshop which used this mark (see previous entry), started at a certain time to produce incense burner in the style of those realized during the Xuande reign, that was considered already in the late Ming dynasty as the ‘classical’ period of the production of bronze incense burners.
The naturalistically rendered decoration of peonies which appear on this incense burner is not common in the large group of bronzes with the signature of Shisou, which are usually decorated with archaistic motifs.
