Description:
Chinese export porcelain plate decorated en grisaille (or encre de chine or ink color) decorated en grisaille (or encre de chine or ink color) in black and gilding 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 in the foreground; and a rim border with its Rococo design of linked ribbons, cartouches, and flower sprays, which is one of eight known borders varieties taken from du Paquier porcelain produced in Vienna. 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, who has suggested that these wares, being rarely abraded, were apparently meant for special occasions, has identified a series of twenty-four prints of New Testament scenes done in 1680 by the Amsterdam engraver Jan Luyken (1649-1712) as the print sources for the four scenes from the life of Christ: 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. In 1712 these were followed by eighteen prints illustrating scenes from the Old Testament, which were equally successful. Together these prints were used, with some minor alterations, to illustrate several editions of the Bible, among them a cheap octavo one. This became a sort of common people's Bible and was repeatedly reprinted into the 19th century. The first octavo Lutheran Bible with Luyken's illustrations was printed in 1734. The title page of this edition and subsequent editions included an portrait of Martin Luther over a cartouche of Christ and flanked by his disciples (not done by Luyken), also used on chinese export procelain wares. Jean McClure Mudge notes: "The life of Christ were special-order wares and may be found in several countries. 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. Chinese enamelers developed ink-color decoration as a method of reproducing print images on porcelain for the western market. Dominated by black enamels and washes, ink-color decoration was first produced in the 1730s and remained popular throughout the 18th century. Often period documents refer to this decoration as "pencil'd," reflecting its use of fine brush strokes and black color.
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