A MEISSEN COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE FIGURE OF TARTAGLIA FROM THE DUKE OF WEISSENFELS SERIES
Lot 37

A MEISSEN COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE FIGURE OF TARTAGLIA FROM THE DUKE OF WEISSENFELS SERIES

CIRCA 1744

Closed4 June 2013

Price Realised

GBP 6,000

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How to sell

A MEISSEN COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE FIGURE OF TARTAGLIA FROM THE DUKE OF WEISSENFELS SERIES
CIRCA 1744
Modelled by J.J. Kändler and P. Reinicke, standing before a tree-stump with his arms extended downwards before him, wearing a gilt-edged white hat, cape, tunic and trousers and yellow shoes with blue rosettes, on a mound base applied with a flower and foliage (restoration to hat, both hands, edge of cape, slight chips to foliage)
5½ in. (14 cm.) high

Anonymous sale; Christie's, Geneva, 12 November 1976, lot 82.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 2 December 2003, lot 49.

Specialist note

Tartaglia, a gentle zanni or servant character, is modelled standing still with his hands dropped to the side of his body, a pose commonly associated with Pierrot; it is also a pose which indicates that the character has just finished a soliloquy, as his hands are lowered and fingers extended at rest.

Reinicke's work book records in September 1744: '1 dergl., Tartaglio, in Thon bouhsirt' (1 ditto Tartaglio, modelled in clay), see Rainer Rückert, Meissener Porzellan, Munich, 1966, no. 959 for another example and where he also notes that this figure is known as Pedrolino in the factory lists. For the example in The Gardiner Museum, Toronto (inv. no. G83.1.0925), see Meredith Chilton, Harlequin Unmasked, The Commedia dell'Arte and Porcelain Sculpture, Singapore, 2001, p. 312, no. 112.

The source for this figure is an engraving 'Habit de Tartaglia' by François Joullain in Luigi Riccoboni's Histoire du Théâtre Italien, Paris, 1728.