Day 179 - Porcelain pottery vendor

August 21, 2019

Gallery 508 centers on Italian decorative arts of the 18th century. The wall placard describes, and in the furnishings on display one can see, the transition from the Rococo to the Neo-Classical style, with its more restrained, rectilinear lines and simpler ornamentation.

I suddenly realize why there are so many rooms -well over 50 - devoted to European sclpture and decorative arts: because so many wealthy people donated their prize possessions to the Met and expected them to be put out on exhibit, so that visitors could admire both the donors' taste and their generosity.  So, for example, I note that among the objects shown in this gallery,  Douglas Dillon and Lewis Untermeyer gave the museum small soft-paste porcelain figures made at the Capodimonte Manufactory near Naples, and Bernard Baruch donated  an 18th century Venetian painting. I'm surprised to see a hanukkiah and a magnificent silver Torah crown and finials; one was purchased with funding from various sources, including a number of prominent Jewish families, the other with funding from the Annenberg Foundation. I don't know whether the gifts were specifically for the acquisition of Judaica, but the donors must have been pleased by these purchases.  

Usually I don't much like ceramic figurines - I regard them as dust-gatherers - but today's object, the soft-paste porcelain figure of a pottery vendor, only about 5 or 6 inches high and made at the Capodimonte works in 1745, strikes me as absolutely charming. In contrast to other figurines that depict courting lovers or Pulcinella, the young man shown is working-class, and hard-working by the looks of it: He clutches a pot in his ams, three jugs are suspended from his waist, and a large basket that is textured to look like rattan and is spilling over with miniature pots and plates of various shapes is strapped to his back. Below his well- muscled calves his feet are bare. The young man's mouth is open, as if he's calling prospective buyers to come inspect his wares. The figurine is a creamy white with just a few exceptions: the youth's ruddy face and brown hair, and the fine painted lines that indicate the outlines of his clothes and the rims of the pots he is selling.  I read that the piece was modeled by one Giuseppe Grucci. You sense that Grucci had a real understanding of, and sympathy for, the lives of the common people -- although I see that he also did the models for some of the pairs of lovers and a Harlequin and Columbine. Without doubt he was a very good observer and a skilled artist in the medium.