Meissen figure of Scaramouche
date: label: date made
content: ca 1745
label: date made
content: 1745
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen figure of Scaramouche
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content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: 5¼" 13.3 cm.
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content: OBJECT NAME: Figure
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content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
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content: DATE MADE: 1745
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content: SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
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content: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishing
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content: Industry and Manufacturing
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content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: ID NUMBER: 64.440
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content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 220
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content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
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content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
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content: MARKS: None
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content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
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content: This figure is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
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content: The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
label: Description
content: Peter Reinicke (1715-1768) modeled this figure in about 1743 to 1745. There are two versions of Scaramouche and it is not clear in which order they were modeled. This figure belongs to the Duke of Weissenfel’s series.
label: Description
content: Scaramouche, one of the stock characters of the Italian Comedy troupe, was a rascally and unreliable servant who got himself into trouble through his own acts of mischief. He got himself out of trouble by ensnaring an unwitting and innocent individual who then fell victim to the fury of the characters that Scaramouche himself had injured. Scaramouche is seen here in a characteristic dancing pose, and dance was an important part of the Italian Comedy performances.
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content: Johann Adolf II Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels commissioned a set of Italian Comedy figures for table decoration in 1743. The Meissen sculptors Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775), Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1695-1749), and Peter Reinicke (1711-1768) collaborated on the project. The Meissen sculptors based their Italian Comedy figures for the Duke on engravings in Louis Riccoboni’s (1676-1753) Histoire du Théâtre Italien (History of the Italian Theater) published in Paris in 1728. Born in Modena as Luigi Riccoboni, he followed his father onto the stage, but was not satisfied with the improvised and chaotic nature of the Italian comedy. He moved to Paris and started his own company which faltered at first until Riccoboni began to write his own more refined plays in French based on the Commedia dell’Arte comedic plots and stock characters.
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content: Riccoboni’s plays were highly successful with Parisian audiences, and because often performed in public places the Italian Comedy reached a wide cross-section of society. The subject of the Italian comedy characters influenced painters, especially Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), who in turn influenced other French artists of the eighteenth century; his student Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Pater (1695-1736), Nicholas Lancret (1690-1743), François Boucher (1703-1770, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806). Ten of the engravings used by the Meissen sculptors were by the Parisian engraver, print-seller, dealer and auctioneer, François Joullain (1697-1778) and published in Riccoboni’s Histoire du Théâtre Italien. Origins of the Commedia dell’Arte are in dispute, but the form of the Italian comedy that emerged in the sixteenth century was fundamentally one that grew from the carnival, from popular story telling, rustic romps, and improvised street theater. The characters did not change much, only the plots varied, but the Italian Comedy’s influence may be seen still in Punch and Judy marionettes, the work of mime artists, in the movies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, in twentieth century modernist art and theater, and in situation comedies on TV.
label: Description
content: The Meissen Italian Comedy figures were used for decorating the dessert table for official and festive banquets. They formed part of the design in conjunction with decorations sculpted in sugar and other materials to create an elaborate display for the final course of the meal. The practice of sculpting in sugar, marzipan, butter, and ice for the festive table goes back for many centuries, and porcelain figures were a late addition to the tradition.
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content: The figure is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold.
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content: On the Saxon court confectionary see Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, 'The Hof Conditorey in Dresden: Traditions and innovations in Sugar and Porcelain", in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp.121-131.
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content: See also Ivan Day, 'Sculpture for the Eighteenth-Century Garden Dessert', in Harlan Walker (ed.) Food in the Arts: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooking, 1999.
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content: On the Italian Comedy see Meredith Chilton, 2001, Harlequin Unmasked: The Commedia dell’Arte and Porcelain Sculpture; Lawner, L., 1998, Harlequin on the Moon: Commedia dell’Arte and the Visual Arts, and also On the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History see http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/comm/hd_comm.htm
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 448-449.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Saxony, Meissen
topic: label: Subject
content: Manufacturing
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
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content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
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content: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.64.440
label: catalog number
content: 64.440
label: accession number
content: 257835
label: collector/donor number
content: 220
objectType: label: Object Name
content: figurine
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 1/4 in; 13.335 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 1/4 in x 3 1/8 in x 2 1/2 in; 13.335 cm x 7.9375 cm x 6.35 cm