A Doccia gilt-metal mounted oval snuff-box and cover

CIRCA 1760

细节

A Doccia gilt-metal mounted oval snuff-box and cover
Circa 1760
Perhaps painted by Giovacchino Rigacci, inscribed around the base with verses from Dante's Inferno, Dant.Inf.Cat.9.V.127. and Paradiso Dant.Parad.12.V.55, within puce and gilt scrollwork cartouches, the underside inscribed BIBBIA SACRA above the iron-red and gilt Bible on a sunburst within a purple and gilt scroll cartouche, the exterior of the cover with half-length portraits of figures from the Reformation including Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, John VI of Nassau and Renata, Duchess of Ferrara in black and purple robes, the interior to the cover with half-length portraits of figures from the Counter-Reformation including Cardinals and theologians from the Catholic church (slight rubbing to base, and scratch to exterior of cover)
3½in. (8.8cm.) wide

出版

G. Morazzoni, Le Porcellan Italiane (1935), pl. IX.

拍品专文

This snuff-box, one of four examples known, was probably produced with a didactic object in mind.

The quotations from Dante on the ends of the box, though written many years before, describe the two groups of figures on the exterior and interior of the cover. For a lengthy discussion and identification of the personages depicted see Barbara Beaucamp-Markowsky, op. cit. (1985), pp. 521-523, no. 479, where the example in the Villa Floridiana is illustrated. The same box is illustrated by Leonardo Ginori Lisci, La Porcellana di Doccia (1963), pl. XL, Ginori Lisci lists the three other examples known.

No satisfactory explanation has as yet been put forward as to the production of four identical snuff-boxes depicting such a recondite subject. Four identical snuff-boxes are without parallel and would suggest that they were made for the members of a dining club or philosophical society.