Day 192 - Meissen lions

September 30, 2019

Gallery 533 is a large space devoted to the decorative arts of Central Europe during the 18th century - more specifically, the arts of the German-speaking states.  When I visited Prague, I came face to face with how little I know about the history of Central Europe, and this gallery further reminded me of that.  The gallery includes objects of glass and silver, wood carvings, and a great many Meissen porcelains. 

I look at these porcelains first, and I'm impressed by their unanticipated delicacy and refinement. The gallery also contains a number of pieces of furniture, which are just as ornate and rococo as their French counterparts - if anything, even fussier and heavy- looking.  I suspect that the pleasure I take in the gallery is completely shaped by examining the small, delicate objects before I focus on the bulky chairs and tables.  I wonder if my impressions of the 18th century French galleries would have been different if I had looked first at the faience and other ceramics and only later at the furniture. In any event, those galleries felt endless to me.

A number of things strike me about the Meissen pieces. One is the influence of East Asia. I knew that Asian art exerted  a big influence during certain periods and on certain art forms (the imitation of blue-and-white Chinese ceramics, for example, or the influence of Japanese painters on Whistler and Matisse), but I had never for a minute thought about its influence on the art of the German states. Yet here I see Meissen porcelains depicting Kwan Yin and a seated Buddhist deity, as well as those painted with more fanciful images of Chinese figures and scenes. 

Another thing I note is the interest in nature. The gallery contains a large collection of Meissen birds,  including, among others, life-size or nearly life-size figures of a magpie, parrots, kingfishers, mallards, and seagulls. According to the placard, these were based on both live birds and stuffed specimens.  Apparently, porcelain birds were displayed in multiples at eye level or above, so they speak  in part to the desire of the owners of such collections to impress their viewers with their wealth - but also with their interest in the world around them.  

Today's objects are evidence of another characteristic I hadn't anticipated - a sense of humor. They are 

a large porcelain lion and lioness, each about 3 feet long and 2 feet high, modeled by Johann Gottlieb Kirchner in Meissen around 1732. The beasts were part of a large menagerie intended to decorate the Dresden palace of Augustus the Strong, the Elector of Saxony, who refurbished the structure especially to house his porcelain collection.  Some of the animals commissioned for the palace are highly naturalistic and tender - I think of a similar-sized figure of a she-goat licking its suckling kid with her long tongue. There are certainly naturalistic features of the lions as well: the carefully-modeled haunches of the lioness, which give evidence of the powerful muscles beneath her skin, the flowing mane of the male. But their faces are so human! Her furrowed brows and raised eyebrows make her look worried and sad, but also comic. Humorous, too, are the male's receding chin and the muttonchop-like mustaches that adorn both their muzzles.  Since I imagine that Kirchner could have made more naturalistic-looking visages if he'd wanted to, I wonder if the sculptor was poking fun at some individuals by incorporating their features into those of the lions.

When I see this gallery, which speaks so strongly to the interest of the aristocracy (and wealthy merchant classes?) in exotic places and in nature - and perhaps more broadly, to the strength of the Enlightenment in these states - it makes the tragedy of the Third Reich all the more incomprehensible.