IMPORTANT PICTORIAL PLAQUE WITH AN ALLEGORY OF A MONTH Künersberg, circa 1760.

IMPORTANT PICTORIAL PLAQUE WITH AN ALLEGORY OF A MONTH

Künersberg, circa 1760.
Faience decorated in overglaze enamels. Octagonal form with raised border. At the center, a girl standing on a strip of ground, holding a symbolic bouquet of lilies and lily-of-the-valley and a radish, her gaze directed towards the viewer. Musical instruments on the ground. In the background, a park landscape with a formal French garden and a pavilion beside an artificial lake with figures in boats. Beyond, a fading hilly landscape in pale blue in the manner of the Künersberg "Uferlandschaften" (riverbank landscapes). In a later carved wooden frame. Unmarked.
Ø 38 cm (without wooden frame).
Minor chips to the glaze at the edges.

Provenance:
- Philippe Couque Art Gallery, Paris.
- Peter Ducret Collection, Kilchberg; acquired from the above in 1993.

Exhibited:
H.W. Bayer: Muffelbrand und scharfes Feuer. 250 Years of Künersberger Fayencen, Memmingen 1995, exhibition catalog, p. 212, No. 113.

An engraving from the series "The Twelve Months of the Year" by Wolfgang Kilian (1581–1662), based on drawings by Johann Matthias Kager (1575–1632), served as a faithful model for the Künersberg painter in creating this charming scene.

Remarkable for its size alone, this pictorial plaque combines brilliant coloring and painterly refinement in the depiction of a young woman whose lily symbolizes her innocence and purity, while the lily-of-the-valley alludes to the season. In this rare example, the plaque combines characteristic elements of Künersberg painting - a wooded landscape in two different shades of green and the pale blue landscape appearing hazily in the background, characteristic of the Künersberg "Uferlandschaften" (riverbank landscapes) - with the exceptionally fine detailing of the girl rendered in the manufactory’s characteristic, vibrant overglaze colors.

Pictorial plaques formed part of the manufactory’s repertoire. A masterpiece of the type is the plaque in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York depicting, from a bird’s-eye view, the Künersberg manufactory complex together with the Küner family’s country residence (object no. 50.211.199). Among the closest comparisons in terms of quality and refinement is a pair of pictorial plaques from the Ulrich Seiler Collection, each centered by a large-scale female figure personifying Summer or Autumn and enthroned before a Künersberg landscape (Weinmüller, auction no. 145, 1973, no. 126). Two further examples depict a wild-boar hunt (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, inv. no. 56/889) and a bourgeois couple taking their morning coffee and chocolate (Städtisches Museum Memmingen, inv. no. 2,822, "Künersberg" exhibition 1995, fig. 116), both based on engravings by Johann Elias Ridinger.

The hand responsible for this fine painting has not been identified with a particular painter. The choice of colors, the composition of the landscape and the figure of the girl, however, are entirely in the tradition of the refined Künersberg landscapes from the later phase of production, during the period of Valentin Bontemps.

We thank Dr Andreas Heege for drawing our attention to the Kupferstichkabinett of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, which holds a complete series of the twelve prints that served as models.