Description:
Chinese export porcelain cup with a coil handle, decorated in the Famille rose palette with a scene of the Crucifixion with Jesus on a cross topped with "INRI" flanked by the two thieves on crosses, a crowd of figures behind, soldiers with spears raised on the left, and four soldiers throwing dice. Jingdezhen potters produced porcelain with Christian imagery from as early as 1696 for Catholic families, missionaries, and religious communities commissioning Chinese porcelain dinner and tea services with various scenes from the Old and New Testaments. A 1712 letter written by Père d’Entrecolles, a Jesuit missionary based in Jingdezhen, made a reference to a porcelain fragment showing Christ on the Cross flanked by Mary and John the Baptist. Chinese porcelain scholar Christiaan Jörg suggests that these wares were intended for use on the four Christian feast days; and has identified illustrations by the Amsterdam engraver Jan Luyken (1649-1712) as the print sources for the four scenes from the life of Christ, which appear most frequently on Chinese export plates and tea wares: Nativity (from Luke, Chapter 2: 7-16), Crucifixion (from Matthew, Chapter 22: 35-50), Resurrection (from Matthew, Chapter 28: 1-4), and Ascension (from Apostles, Chapter I: 4-12). A fifth design, the Descent from the Cross, is an extremely rare addition. These scenes were made for a revision of the Lutheran Bible printed in the early 18th century; this revision also has the illustration of Martin Luther over a scene of Christ and his disciples, also used on CEP wares, which was first shown in Dutch Lutheran Bible revised by Adolph Visscher and published in Amsterdam in 1648. Jean McClure Mudge notes: "The life of Christ were special-order wares and may be found in several countires. The precise renderings indicated fine engravings rather than woodblock prints as sources, but the Chinese painter's unfamiliarity with human anatomy evidently made even copying from detailed sources a problem." Religious patterns enjoyed a long period of popularity; as late as 1778, the Dutch East India Company sent an ink color Crucifixion dish back to China in order to have a tea and dinner set made with its decoration. In 1779, Dutch merchants shipped 22 such tea sets to Holland, intended for the predominantly Catholic southern Netherlands. Most Biblical scenes on Chinese porcelain are painted in ink color enamels, but occasionally polychrome enameled pieces such as this cup are found.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+61.249 |
