Meissen figure group of a bacchanal procession
date: label: date made
content: ca 1760
label: Date made
content: 1740 to 1750
label: date made
content: 1760
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen figure group of a bacchanal procession
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: 8½ " 21.6 cm
label: Description
content: Mark: Crossed swords in underglaze blue
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Figure group
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1760
label: Description
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
label: Description
content: ID NUMBER: 1983.0565.60
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 54
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARK: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
label: Description
content: PURCHASE: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
label: Description
content: This figure group 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.
label: Description
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: The figure group, possibly modeled by Friedrich Elias Meyer (1724-1785), represents the revels in honor of the Greek god Dionysis or the Roman Bacchus, and follows the Rococo style of representation epitomized by the French painter François Boucher. The man seated on the donkey, or an ass, represents the drunken Silenus prevented by Bacchus from falling off his mount in a stupor. A bacchante reclines at Bacchus’s feet with a basket full of grapes.
label: Description
content: The Renaissance humanist tradition was still active in early eighteenth-century court culture, and the Meissen manufactory produced a large number of mythological and allegorical subjects featured in other branches of the visual arts and in the elaborate court entertainments, festivals and processions that took place in Dresden. This model is listed in the 1773 inventory of confectionary items and was likely used for decorative display on the dessert table (see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, p. 345).
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.
label: Description
content: The group is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold.
label: Description
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: On court festivals see Watanabe O’Kelly, H., 2002, Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque
label: Description
content: On Bacchus/Dionysius see Grafton, A., Most, G.W., Settis, S., eds. 2010, The Classical Tradition, p. 272; Dalby, A., 2003, Bacchus: A Biography
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 430-431.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Saxony, Meissen
topic: label: Subject
content: Donkeys
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: 1983.0565.60
label: accession number
content: 1983.0565
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0565.60
label: collector/donor number
content: 54
objectType: label: Object Name
content: figurine
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue underglaze (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: baccanal figure group (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 1/2 in x 9 in; 21.59 cm x 22.86 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 1/2 in x 8 5/16 in x 5 3/16 in; 21.59 cm x 21.11375 cm x 13.17625 cm