Live Auction 10397Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes
A MEISSEN GROUP OF 'THE MOCKERY OF AGE'
Lot 31

A MEISSEN GROUP OF 'THE MOCKERY OF AGE'

CIRCA 1740, INDISTINCT BLUE CROSSED SWORDS MARKS TO BASE

Closed3 June 2015

Price Realised

GBP 158,500

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A MEISSEN GROUP OF 'THE MOCKERY OF AGE'
CIRCA 1740, INDISTINCT BLUE CROSSED SWORDS MARKS TO BASE
Modelled by J.J. Kändler, with a seated elderly man kissing a young lady with two Harlequin figures nearby, the old man holding a crutch, the lady seated beside him with her arm around him, a dog under her other arm, one Harlequin offering the old man vegetables, the other prancing behind him, holding feathers, on a shaped mound base applied with flowers and foliage (cracked and restored across base and through old man's left thigh and ankles, associated in-filling to cracks, harlequin's right arm restored, replacement feathers, minor chipping to extremities, slight rubbing to gilding)

8 ¼ in. (21 cm.) high

Specialist note

This model is recorded in Kändler's Taxa of 1740-48 and variations exist without the figure of Harlequin holding feathers. The group may have been based on a combination of engravings, including an early 18th century engraving by Martin Engelbrecht after Molière's Le malade imaginaire (see the etching by Charles Jean Louis Courty, circa 1872 of the same scene, which is after a painting by Boucher on page....) and Engelbrecht's engraving Studying Language from 'Academia', published in Augsburg in 1725, see Meredith Chilton, Harlequin Unmasked, the Commedia dell'Arte and Porcelain Sculpture, Singapore, 2001, pp. 193, 195 & 301, figs. 312 & 313. A similar group was sold in these Rooms on 21 November 2005, lot 79.