Meissen allegorical figure group representing fire
date: label: date made
content: ca 1740-1750
label: date made
content: 1740-1750
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen allegorical figure group representing fire
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: 7¼" 18.4 cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Figure group
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content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1747
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content: SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
label: Description
content: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
label: Description
content: Industry and Manufacturing
label: Description
content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.28
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content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 424
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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, 1944.
label: Description
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: Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) may have modeled this allegorical representation of fire in May 1747, or it could be the work of Friedrich Elias Meyer (1724-1785). Allegories of the four elements, earth air, fire, and water were cornerstones of the baroque repertoire, rendered in many branches of the visual arts. The figures in this version may refer to Roman mythology and the visit of Venus and Cupid to Vulcan, the keeper of fire and the maker of weapons. In Virgil’s Aeneid Venus persuades Vulcan, her estranged spouse, to make weapons for Aeneas, the son she bore by the shepherd Anchises. (See Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler 1706-1775, 2002, Leipzig 2002, p.118).
label: Description
content: Allegorical and mythological figure groups, especially when made in sugar or in porcelain to decorate dessert tables at banquets or court festivals, were a focus for conversation and diversion where guests could display knowledge of their meanings and origins derived from Renaissance classical humanism, the literature and visual art of ancient Greece and Rome. Eighteenth-century educated elites encountered allegorical themes as they walked in the parks and gardens of great houses and palaces; fountains, grottoes and architectural features supported large scale sculptures in stone, and more rarely bronze, that personified beings associated with water, the seasons, the hunt, and the four elements.
label: Description
content: Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then cut carefully into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.
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content: The group is painted in overglaze enamel colors.
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content: On the modeling and molding process still practiced today at Meissen see Alfred Ziffer, “‘…skillfully made ready for moulding…’ The Work of Johann Joachim Kaendler” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp.61-67.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 438-439.
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: 1987.0896.28
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.28
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 424
objectType: label: Object Name
content: figurine, group
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: allegory of fire (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 1/4 in; 18.415 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 5/16 in x 6 5/8 in x 4 5/8 in; 18.57375 cm x 16.8275 cm x 11.7475 cm