MING DYNASTY, 15TH-16TH CENTURY

A similar scene can be found on a small circular box in the Carl Kempe Foundation, illustrated by J. Wirgin, 'Some Chinese Red Lacquer of the Yuan and Ming Periods', B.M.F.E.A., no. 44, Stockholm, 1972, no. 19, p. 17, where the figure is identified as Western Asiatic. Compare a very similar box illustrated in Between Heaven and Earth, Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, 1988, no. 37. The motif featuring foreign dancers is derived from a renaissance in opera and theater in the late Ming period, and can be seen on an early 15th-century underglaze blue-and-white flask illustrated by R. Krahl and J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, London, 1986, no. 612, pp. 422 and 516.