CIRCA 1765

Double snuff-boxes, intended for keeping two different kinds of snuff, were made at Meissen from around 1733, however, triple snuff-boxes are rarer. They are not mentioned in Kändler's work reports which would suggest that this model was probably produced between 1748 and 1765, a period for which there are no work records. The scene of the procession of commedia dell'arte figures on the interior of the single cover is taken directly from an etching by Simon-François Ravenet (1706-1774) after the painting 'La Marche Comique' by François Pater (1695-1736) which is in the Frick Collection, New York (illustrated right). The dancing Harlequine figure on the double cover takes her pose from the engraving by Georg Friedrich Schmidt (1712-1775), after the painting 'Le Theatre Italien' by Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743).

A snuff-box and cover of the same form and ground colour and decorated with very similar commedia dell'arte scenes was in the collection of Baron Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, the collection of Mrs Charles E. Dunlap and in the Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann Collection, London, from which it was sold in these Rooms on 11 April 2002, lot 787 and subsequently illustrated by Michael Röbbig-Reyes (ed.), Sarah-Katherina Acevedo et al., Meissen Snuff Boxes of the Eighteenth Century, Munich, 2013, pp. 260-265, cat. no. 62. Another triple snuff-box with very similar decoration attributed to Heinrici, is in the Gilbert Collection, London, see Sara Coffin and Bodo Hofstetter, The Gilbert Collection. Portrait Miniatures in Enamel, London, 2000, no. 90, pp. 138-139.