CIRCA 1810, BLUE SCEPTRE MARK, INCISED 16/III, PAINTER'S DARK-GREEN LOZENGE MARK

Details

A BERLIN GREEN-GROUND CABINET-PLATE
CIRCA 1810, BLUE SCEPTRE MARK, INCISED 16/III, PAINTER'S DARK-GREEN LOZENGE MARK
Painted with itinerant Commedia dell'Arte actors performing on an open-air make-shift stage, with Scaramouche on the stage explaining the characters before Harlequin peeping out of the curtains behind, Mezzetin seated playing a guitar on the bench in front, a monkey perched on the scenery and a dog lurking beneath the stage, before an audience of locals and distant ruins, within a gilt-edged panel on a gold ground burnished with foliage scrolls, the border with a band of stiff-leaves within a matt-green band with stylised gilt flowers and foliage, gilt line rim (very minor scratching and wear to gilt ground)
9¾ in. (24.8 cm.) diam.

Provenance

With Angela Gräfin von Wallwitz, Munich, from whom it was acquired on 19 March 1994.

Literature

Birte Abraham, Commedia dell'Arte, The Patricia & Rodes Hart Collection of European Porcelain and Faience, Amsterdam, 2010, pp. 76-77.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 20% on the buyer's premium.

Brought to you by

Matilda Burn

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Lot Essay

This scene is after an engraving after the painting by the Dutch painter Karel Dujardin (1626-1678) 'Landscape with Italian comedians and their audience (The charlatan)', 1657, Musée du Louvre, Paris, illustrated in Jennifer M. Kilian, The paintings of Karel Du Jardin 1626-1678, Catalogue Raisonnée, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA, 2005, p. 296, pl. 7.

It appears that depictions of the Commedia dell'Arte on Berlin porcelain are very rare.

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