Pair Antique 18C Chinese Porcelain Encre de Chine Qianlong Putti / Cupid Bowl China

Out of stock

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Condition Report: Overall condition Dish restored. Bowl with line selection and some frits/chips. Size bowl 142x63mm Dish 153x30mm DXH

A very nicely made set of a dish and a bowl

Decorated in encre de Chine, iron-red, gold and a pink gold wash with a mythological scene. The winged Cupid holds a crimson heart before the goddess’s Venus eyes, while she, with garlands in her lap, reaches down to folds of the gown about her knee. (Howard & Ayers 1978, pp. 330-331)

This scene was most likely taken loosely from the same original, probably an European print of which the original has not been identified as a Meissen porcelain painted with “Venus and Cupid”. In the British Museum is just such a bowl painted in the workshop of J.F. Metzsch of Bayreuth where a similar Cupid is on the right of Venus and a domed building behind her. (Howard & Ayers 1978, vol. 1, pp. 330-331)

Although occasionally identified as Venus and Cupid, the iconography suggests that the two figures are Flora and Zephyr. Wearing a décolleté dress and a blossom in her hair, the goddess of flowers clasps a garland as the winged god of the west wind leans toward her with a single flower in his hand. A popular subject with erotic appeal that is much depicted in Western art, the scene is reminiscent of the courtesans whose excesses were part of the Floralia-a Roman springtime festival. The version shown here could be after an engraving by Benoit Audran ! (1661-1721 copying Antoine Coypel (1661-1722). (Litzenburg 2003, p.191)

This well-known design is typical for the mid 18th century.

Encre de Chine
The use of black enamel in imitation of drawings or prints was first developed at the end of the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1662-1722) and the Yongzheng reign (1723-1730). Chinese porcelains decorated in ink colour became popular in Europe around 1740, and until about 1790 continental clients continued to order them, especially for armorials, because the ink-colour process so readily duplicated the engraved bookplates supplied to the decorators as source materials. The technique may have been developed first for use on glass in the 1660s in Germany, where it was called schwarzlot. Eighteenth-century shipping records sometimes may have referenced it as pencilled ware because it was executed with a thin brush called a pencil.  Albert Jacquemart dubbel it encre-de-Chine. Another name Jesuit ware was used still later due in part to the many examples of ceramics with religious motifs that incorporated this technique. En grisaille, another popular term used to refer to this technique, is inappropriate as it refers to works in various media in shades of gray and brown, and it does not convey the quality or technique evident in them. The Dutch terms were zwart geemailleerd or zwart goed (black-eneameled or black goods), and the state inventory of Johannes van Bergen van der Gijp (1713-1784) lists his porcelain as swarte kunst (black art). Works incorporating the reddish enamel known in China as zhucai (yellowish-red colour-or sepia often are grouped with ink-colour wares as well

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