QIANLONG PERIOD, CIRCA 1745

The Dutch engraver, Jan Luyken (1649-1712) made a series of twenty-four engravings of scenes from the New Testament in 1680, which first appeared in an octavo Lutheran bible printed in 1734, and it is from these prints that the Chinese artist has copied these two scenes; two other, closely-related, biblical scenes from this series, the Crucifixion and the Ascension, are also found on Chinese export porcelain. For a discussion on Luyken and these biblical scenes on porcelain, see Christiaan Jörg, `A Pattern of Exchange: Jan Luyken and Chine de Commande Porcelain', Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 37 (2002), pp. 171-176.