Lot 74
A very rare Meissen commemorative turquoise-ground cup and saucer, circa 1740
7 December 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £2,500 inc. premium
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A very rare Meissen commemorative turquoise-ground cup and saucer, circa 1740
The cup with an ear shaped handle highlighted in gold, reserving two medallions within gilt dot and double-line circular borders, one with a portrait of Minerva inscribed 'SAPERE.AVDE', the other inscribed in gold 'SOCIETAS/ ALETHOPHILORVM/ AB/ ERN. CHRISTOPHORO/ S.R.I.COM/ DE MANTEVFFEL/ INSTITVTA/ BEROL/ MDCCXXXVI.', the saucer with a landscape scene framed by a gilt border, gilt borders to the rims, crossed swords marks in underglaze-blue, impressed 24 to the cup and 2 to the saucer (2)
Footnotes
Provenance:
The Gertrude J. and Robert T. Anderson Collection, Christie's London 1 June 1992, lot 52
Exhibited:
Orlando, Florida, Orlando Museum of Art, 27 March 1988 to 12 February 1989, cat. no. 71
The Societas Alethophilorum (Society of Friends of the Truth) was founded in 1736 by Ernst Christoph Graf von Manteuffel (1676-1749), who had been a Saxon Cabinet Minister and Privy Councillor, and was responsible for Saxon/Polish foreign policy between 1728 and 1730, when he was forced out by others opposed to his pro-Habsburg stance. He subsequently lived mostly in Berlin where he was an informant for the Saxon and Habsburg courts.
Around the same time, Manteuffel sought the rehabilitation of the philosopher, Christian Wolff, who has been expelled from Brandenburg-Prussia in 1723. He cultivated a network of intellectuals, theologians, publishers and journalists, who would be instrumental in spreading Wolff's Enlightenment philosophy in the 1730s and 1740s. The Societas Alethophilorum - whose motto Sapere aude (Dare to be wise) was originally used in Horace's first book of Epistles ( dimidium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude, incipe) - grew from a "Tabakskollegium" that was hosted by the Berlin bookseller Haude, whose members included Manteuffel and Johann Gustav Reinbeck. In 1740, the society commissioned a medallion, depicted on this cup, that shows a breast portrait of Minerva with portraits of Wolff and the philospher and mathematician, Gottfried Leibnitz. Apart from Manteuffel and Reinbeck, the society, which numbered only aroud 50 members by the late 1740s, counted among them Johann Christoph Gottsched, Jean Deschamps, Ambrosius Haude and Jean Henri Samuel Formey.
Manteuffel was expelled from Berlin by Frederick the Great in 1740 and moved to Leipzig, where his salon became a meeting place for intellectuals. This cup and saucer probably dates from around that time, and was very likely made for Manteuffel himself, or perhaps another member of the socierty.