6.
A ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ BOWL
Ming dynasty, second half of the 16th century
35 cm diam.
Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, collezione Placido de Sangro (1829-1891).
inv. n. 3470.
The large bowl is painted with lakeside scenery including pagodas and sampans. Though this bowl was made for export, the scenery invokes the idyllic tranquillity that the literati, the scholar-official élite, would wish to retire to. It may also be seen as a political expression of a wishful hope in contrast to the social and political unrest and decline which developed towards the end of the Ming dynasty. The willow (liu), painted around the lakeside, is associated with spring and symbolises immortality and rebirth.
The style of the landscape on this bowl clearly recalls the similar decoration on bowls from the Jiaqing and early Wanli period. See for example the item in the Porzellansammlung in Dresden which was part of a group of porcelains given as a gift in 1590 by the Grand Duke Fedinando de’ Medici of Tuscany (1549-1609) to the Elector Christian I (1560-1591) (E. Ströber, «La maladie de porcelaine». East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig 2001, pp. 16-17, n. 1); compare also with the smaller bowl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which has a German gilt silver from the early seventeenth century (S. G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York 1975, p. 161, pl. 106).
A number of related bowls, third quarter of the sixteenth century, are in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul (R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, 3 voll., London 1986, nn. 1081, 1082, 1084, 1086 and 1088) see also the similar bowl in the Amaral Cabral collection, Lisbon (M.A. Pinto de Matos, Azul e branco da China. Porcelana ao tempo dos descobrimentos. Colecção Amaral Cabral, Lisbon 1997, pp. 108-109, n. 35).
