A Meissen group of Harlequin and Columbine, mid 18th century

Modelled by J.J. Kaendler, both seated, he wearing a mask, a tunic decorated with a pink-ground and playing cards on one side and a colourful diamond pattern on the other, holding a sausage in this raised left hand and a feathered hat in his right hand on her knee, she wearing a small pink tricorn hat, yellow bodice with blue bow and a floral skirt, holding a slapstick in her raised right hand, the base applied with leaves, branches and flowers, 15.8cm high, faint crossed swords mark in blue (his head and left hand restuck, her right wrist restored)

Provenance:
The Rosa Alba Collection of Meissen Porcelain

Kaendler's Taxa from 1740-48 states: '1 Groupgen aus 2 Figuren bestehend, da ein Arlequin neben einem Frauenzimmer sizt, solche zu caressi, die ihn mit der Pritzsche schlägt, 8 Thlr.' [1 group consisting of 2 figures, a harlequin sitting next to a woman, trying to embrace her, she hitting him with a slapstick] (see R. Rückert, Meissener Porzellan (1966), no. 868).

Another example from the collection of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, is illustrated in R. Jansen (ed.), Commedia dell'Arte Fest der Komödianten (2001), no. 22. Further examples are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, and the Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection, illustrated in Dr Erika Pauls-Eisenbeiss, German Porcelain of the 18th Century (1972), vol. I, pp.298-301.