Description:
Chinese export porcelain plate decorated en grisaille (or encre de chine or ink color) in black and gilding with a scene of the Resurrection with Christ rising from the tomb wreathed by a cloud, an angel sitting on a rock on the left side, and three small figures in the background on one side, and four soldiers lying on the ground on the other side; and a rim border based on borders varieties taken from du Paquier porcelain produced in Vienna. During the China Trade symposium held at HD (Sept. 15-17, 2006), William Sargent, Curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., noted that although this is a circa 1745 plate, the decoration was probably added although it cannot now be said if that was done in China or elsewhere. He listed several points: the surface is very dark, an indication of a later firing; the face of the angel is blackened and speckly; there are scratches under the ink-color enamel; the clouds surrounding the Christ figure look like potatoes lumped together; and the rim border is not that normally used for this subject (see HD SR.23 for the nomal rim decoration). This plate had been in the Edward Crowninshield collection, sold at auction in 1934 (lot 490). 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.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+SR.26 |
