54.
A WUCAI ENAMELLED JAR AND COVER
Qing dynasty, Shunzi period
37,5 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4863.
The jar has a decoration painted in the wucai palette, with underglaze blue and bright overglaze polychrome enamels. The body has two large cartouches with lobed profile reserved on a geometrical ground, each of them with a composition of rocks and flowers; the shoulders with six small half-ring handles; the compressed cover with a buddhist lion as finial (a later replacement).
Handles are not common in the Transitional production. A wucai jar in the Musée national Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, has small half-ring handles of the same type (C. Shimizu (edited by), L’Odyssée de la porcelaine chinoise. Collections du Musée national de Céramique, Sèvres et due muse national Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, exhibition catalogue, Paris 2003,pp. 166-167, n. 109).
