A Meissen group of Scaramouche and Columbine, circa 1741

Modelled by J.J. Kaendler, Scaramouche wearing a black hat, pale pink tunic patterned with playing cards and blue breeches, embracing Columbine holding a birdcage and wearing an iron-red bodice with black stomacher, yellow and black striped skirt and a white apron with stylised flowers, a leafy tree to the side, the base applied with leaves and flowers, 17.5cm high, faint traces of crossed swords mark in blue (chips and restoration to the leaves)

Provenance:
The Rosa Alba Collection of Meissen Porcelain

The group is recorded in Kaendler's Taxa:'Groupgen von 2 Figuren, bestehend, so einander umarmen, das Frauenzimmer aber hält in der lincken Hand einen Vogelgebauer' [group made up of 2 figures, embracing each other, the woman however holding a birdcage in her left arm].

Further examples are in the Porcelain Collections, Dresden (illustrated in R. Jansen (ed.), Commedia dell'Arte Fest der Komödianten (2001), no. 18), the Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection, Basel (illustrated in Dr Erika Pauls-Eisenbeiss, German Porcelain of the 18th Century (1972), vol. I, pp. 284-287), the Gardiner Museum, Toronto (illustrated in Meredith Chilton, Harlequin Unmasked (2001), no. 82, fig. 298), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, amongst others. Another example was sold in these rooms, 3 December 2020, lot 86.