A GILT-METAL-MOUNTED MEISSEN PORCELAIN 'COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE' SNUFF-BOX

MID-18TH CENTURY

Details

Of shaped rectangular form with slight bombé profile, the underside of the hinged cover finely stipple-painted with a commedia dell'arte scene including Pierrot, Colombine and Harlequin in an interior, the exterior painted with sprays of flowers, fruit, vegetables and fungi, the interior of the lower body fully gilt
3 1/8 in. (7.9 cm.) wide
Provenance

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 6 November 1970, lot 114.
Literature

B. Beaucamp-Markowsky, Porzellandosen des 18.Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1985, p. 167, no. 123.
U. Pietsch and C. Banz, Triumph of the Blue Swords, Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeiosie, 1710-1815, Leipzig, 2010, p. 366, (mentioned).
S.-K. Acevedo et al., Meissen Snuff Boxes of the Eighteenth Century, Munich, 2013, p. 220 (mentioned).


Lot Essay

The Commedia dell'Arte scene painted on the interior of the cover of this snuff-box appears to have held resounding popularity, as several Meissen and Fürstenburg examples are known to exist, the earliest dating to the 1730s. The scene is discussed by Sarah-Katharina Acevedo, et al., where its origin is traced to the Meissen painter Philipp Ernst Schindler Senior (1694-1765), and a Meissen snuff-box, circa 1735, with the same scene painted by Schindler on the interior of its cover is illustrated. The authors note Schindler's ingenuity, describing how he appears to have based each of the three Commedia figures on a distinct graphic source: the seated Harlequin deriving from a print by Nicolas-Henri Tardieu after a painting by Nicolas Lancret; the Pierrot based an etching by Simon François Ravenet, after a painting by Jean-Baptiste François Pater; and the seated lady from an etching by Gottfried Berhard Götz. See S.-K. Acevedo et al., Meissen Snuff Boxes of the Eighteenth Century, Munich, 2013, pp. 220-221, cat. no. 48.
This scene also appears on a shaped rectangular Meissen snuff-box, circa 1745-1750, in the collection of the Iparművészeti Múzeum, Budapest (inv. no. 5860), to which the scene is also painted on the underside of the hinged cover. Alfred Ziffer has attributed the painting of the Budapest snuff-box to Johann Martin Heinrici. See U. Pietsch and C. Banz, Triumph of the Blue Swords, Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeiosie, 1710-1815, Leipzig, 2010, p. 366, cat no. 459.
In her note on the present box, Barbara Beaucamp-Markowsky mentions that a box bearing the same scene is preserved in the collection of the Kunstindustrimuseum, Copenhagen, inv. no. B 253/1939. See Beaucamp-Markowsky, Porzellandosen des 18.Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1985, p. 167, no. 123. An example by Fürstenburg, circa 1758, was sold by Christie's, New York, 18 October 2002, lot 1134.