A rare Doccia figure of "Winter", circa 1740

Footnotes

Provenance:
Anon. sale, sold in these Rooms, 14 May 2008, lot 39

The figure is modelled after one of the four seasons sculpted in ivory by Balthasar Permoser. Klaus Lankheit, Die Modellsammlung der Porzellanmanufaktur Doccia (1982), p. 96, illustrates a similar coloured figure in the Museo Corrreale di Sorrento, his left arm hanging down rather than holding a torch. Another, slightly later polychrome model of the same type is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Charles E. Sampson Memorial Fund, and is illustrated by J. Munger, Eighteenth-century Doccia porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in Quaderni degli amici di Doccia, I (2007), ill. 18. In the inventory of the Doccia factory the series of the four seasons is mentioned around 1760 as Le quattro Stagioni di Baldassar senza padellina, e con candeliere, alte circa mezzo braccio, where it is also mentioned the ivory originals were kept in the collection of Marchese Giuseppe Ginori in Florence. These figures appear to be lost. Lankheit mentions there are two series of the seasons by Permoser mentioned in the inventory, which might relate to the figure groups with and without candle holders. Balthasar Permoser (1651-1732) moved to Florence in 1675 where he worked for Giovanni Battista Foggini, in whose studio he remained fourteen years before returning to Dresden in 1689 where he worked at the court of Johann Georg III, Elector of Saxony. Permoser returned to Florence once more in 1697, this time remaining only a year. A closely related ivory series of the four seasons by Permoser dated 1685-90 is in the Green Vaults in Dresden, inv. nos. II 45-47, published in Balthasar Permoser hats gemacht: Der Hofbildhauer in Sachsen, exhibition catalogue, Skulpturensammlung (2001), cat. no. 18a-d, where the existence of two other ivory versions of the Four Seasons is noted. Another Doccia example of this figure was sold in these rooms, 16th November 2005, lot 125.