CIRCA 1750, BLUE CROSSED SWORDS MARK, THE MOUNT LATER

Details

A MEISSEN ORMOLU-MOUNTED PLAQUE
CIRCA 1750, BLUE CROSSED SWORDS MARK, THE MOUNT LATER
Attributed to J.M. Heinrici, painted with a scene from the Commedia dell'Arte with Doctor Boloardo riding on a donkey and playing a drum accompanied by Pierrot and Harlequin waving, a dog at their feet, Columbine seated with two admirers on a rock beside them, in an idyllic landscape before a monument and a building in the distance (slight chipping to edge of plaque at back), the ormolu frame cast with scrolls
3½ in. (9 cm.) x 5 in (12.7 cm.)

Provenance

Dr. Siegfried Ducret Collection, Kilchberg near Zürich.
With Kunsthandel Rudigier, Munich, from whom it was acquired on 5 March 2005.

Literature

Siegfried Ducret, 'Johann Martin Heinrici. Miniaturist in Meissen (1711-1786)', Faenza, No. 37, 1951, pp. 50-54, pl. XVIII.
Siegfried Ducret, Keramik und Graphik des 18. Jahrhunderts. Vorlagen für Maler und Modelleur, Brunswick, 1973, p. 116, pl. 140.
Birte Abraham, Commedia dell'Arte, The Patricia & Rodes Hart Collection of European Porcelain and Faience, Amsterdam, 2010, pp. 72-73.

Special notice

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

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Lot Essay

Johann Martin Heinrici was considered one of the most skilled painters at the factory and was appointed painter to the court of King Augustus III in 1755. He worked at Meissen from 1742 to 1757 and then had a short period of employment at Höchst and Frankenthal from 1757 to 1761. From 1761 Heinrici is recorded as working exclusively for 'The King, the Electoral Prince and the Electoral Princess here in Dresden', see Rainer Rückert, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, Munich 1990, p. 155.

The subject of this plaque is taken from the engraving 'Marche comique' by Simon François Ravenet1 after a painting by Jean Baptiste Pater in the Frick Collection, New York.2 A detail of the engraving is illustrated on page 8. The same scene derived from the 'Marche comique' print appears on the cover of a Meissen box painted by Johann Jacob Wagner,1 and it also appears on a tea-caddy illustrated by Günther Hansen, Formen der Commedia dell'Arte in Deutschland, Emsdetten, 1984, p. 104, pl. 55.

1. See Siegfied Ducret, ibid., Brunswick, 1973, p. 116, no. 141.
2. Of circa 1745-50, on loan to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, see Reinhard Jansen (ed.), Commedia dell'Arte, Fest der Komödianten, Keramische Kostbarkeiten aus den Museen der Welt, Stuttgart, 2001, p. 56, no. 57.

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